Reviewed by: ryan Date: 11/21/1999 Summary: Arousment (1999) One of the interesting things about Winners' Productions is that they hire directors who were prominent in the 80s. Previously we have LEE Chiu and now we have TO Pak-hon. Will TO Pak-hon be a suitable director for Winners' Productions? We can see from his latest film 'Arousment'. 'Arousment' is a story about a famous Disc Jockey called TIN Cheung. His radio program is very popular and he has loads of fans. Though he has plenty of girls around, he is set to marry his fiance LAN King-ying, who is a fashion designer. Once upon a time, a girl called Annie LO phoned in to TIN's program and they met. TIN got drunk, and they had sex. On that night, Annie stole the key to TIN's apartment. She fell in love with TIN, but he only saw it as a one-night stand. Annie, hurt, tried to commit suicide but failed. Finally she went crazy. Subsequently, TIN's are murdered one by one. The police suspect that Annie is the killer and her next target is TIN's fiance...... Relative to other Winners' production, there are less love scenes in Arousment. However, you can't get into the plot, as it is so ridiculous. For example, TIN knows Annie stole his keys and that she attempted to get into his home on several occasions. I can't believe that TIN would let happen without changing the locks. This also shows how indifferent they are to making the plot logical. Crazy Fans can be effective movie material. But in the movie there is nothing to show us why TIN Cheung's fans become so infatuated with him. We just see a string of unknown girls trying to have dinner with TIN for no apparent reason. At least they should give him flowers to show how much they love him. Without any elaboration, the audience can't follow the plot. His fiance LAN King-ying is a bit of a closed book, the film pays very little attention to her. At the very least, it should explain why their relationship was on hold while she was studying overseas and how they got back together. The movie needs all this detail to be comprehensible, but are omitted. Maybe the love scenes are less numerous than usual because TO Pak-hon doesn't know how to direct them. There is one between TIN and Annie, but they replay it twice in the latter part of the movie. I would have preferred them to shoot extra new love scenes rather than just repeating them... There is a subplot about the politics in the radio station but it's broken into unrelated pieces and so is hard to follow. The movie also suffers from unnecessary prolonged scenes. For example, I can't see the point in panning the camera around a shopping centre for ten seconds. This only helps in making the movie longer and more boring. TO Pak-hon's directing in 'Arousement' is sub-standard, even worse than most of the Winners' productions. Is it the right time for TO to take a look at himself, and wonder how come his directing is so poor nowadays?