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.Dressed in a clean suit for the first time in the film, he quietly rubs hisface against Yan s shoulder as they ride off to the court on a motorcy-cle.It seems that Shing and Yan s roles have reversed once again thistime the father is in the care of the child.The concluding shot of thisscene shows a pad of tears left on Yan s shoulder.A smile on Yan s facesuggests she is aware of her new role in this relationship.The separationof father and child recalls Yan s encounter with her puppy and its newowner much earlier on, but the overlap is more than a mere parallel.Yan s rubbing her face against the puppy is repeated in Shing s similar Allegory, Kinship, and Redemption 79gesture, but in both scenes Yan is the centre of gravity, as a maturingyouth who has learned to accept the pain of losing a loved one to abetter course.Renewal, it seems, is always premised on a bitter-sweetgoodbye.The director s sense of humour in playing up the visual pun ofthe father/puppy notwithstanding, the father being compared to a sub-missive, child-like puppy also reunites him with the real Isabella (Yan smother) he deserted some eighteen years ago.In Isabella, the creation of the idyllic, fairy-tale landscape in the filmis complemented by elements of comic romance.Almost standard fea-tures in Hong Kong s action films, comic moments are usually insertedinto high-octane action sequences through body movements and ges-tures, in-jokes, slapsticks, and black humour, reflecting an influencefrom earlier Cantonese cinema and Cantonese opera.In Isabella, theromantic tale between Yan and Shing is placed within a pseudo-policeand gangster back story that propels the main action, from Shing s ini-tial moral bankruptcy to redemption through compassion, courage, andself-sacrifice.Yan s initial appearance as a deviant youth and her delib-erately contrived pretence as seductress and femme fatale enable manyscenes of comic reversals.For instance, in a series of disconnected scenesYan plays out her fantasy as Shing s true love.In an attempt to per-suade Shing s numerous girlfriends to leave him, Yan assumes the airof an experienced woman as she lectures the others about life s priori-ties.These shots are shown in sequence, each showing Yan acting outthe same role as if they were discarded scenes or rehearsals.Dramaticirony is magnified since Yan s secret is known to the viewer, and theself-reflexive artificiality of Yan s role-play draws as much attention toher defiant immaturity as to the complex feelings of a teenage daughtertowards the father.All this points to a conscious design by the direc-tor to align Shing and Yan, despite their age gap, in the same idealismassociated not with childhood innocence but adolescence, symbolizedby Yan s slender body and budding sexuality quite explicitly conveyedin the numerous medium- and close-distance shots that emphasize theyouthfulness of her face and body, especially her legs and feet.In onescene, Yan and Shing are seen walking along the waterfront chattingand teasing each other.The camera cuts from a medium tracking shotto a low-angle shot horizontal to the ground, showing Yan and Shing sfeet in plastic slippers.Shing walks off-screen to make space for a close-up on Yan s feet, one of which is struggling to get back into a loosenedslipper.All the while, their tête-à-tête goes on as background voice, butvisually the bare legs and feet of Yan occupy the foreground, lookingboth sensuous and vulnerable.There are, as one critic comments, erotic 80 Time and Memoryovertones in the portrayal of Yan and her ambivalent attachment toShing, an eroticism motivated by sexual fantasy of middle-aged men.16This reading reveals another dimension of the film s idealized vision ofMacau: this idealism has to do with a deeper-running anxiety of the(male) subject caught up with an impending doom.As in Fu Bo, police corruption and involvement in triad-related crimesand violence are rampant in pre-handover Macau, and Shing as a small-time cop deserted by both his police and triad associates epitomizesthe uncertainty and demoralization of the colonial administration andMacau s society as a whole on the eve of regime change.But unlikeFu Bo s claustrophobic vision of mortality that envelops all, Isabellaopts for comic reversal, a conscious artistic effort to lift its sociallyand emotionally doomed characters to an imaginary realm of summerromance, albeit one that is only partially insulated from intrusions bythe much harsher realities of adulthood.Such a vision is indeed arti-ficial, and the camera is fully aware of its presence as a guiding lensin numerous tracking shots, long takes, and wide-angle shots of Yanand Shing roaming deserted streets, alleyways, and beachside walkwaysof the city, whose old-style colonial architecture and cityscape emita nostalgic flavour through the reflexive rays of sunlight in the dayand chiaroscuros at night
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