Rouge (1987)

The ghost story that is really about memory. Anita Mui plays a 1930s courtesan from the Shek Tong Tsui teahouses who returns as a ghost to 1987 Hong Kong, searching for the lover, Leslie Cheung, from whom a suicide pact was meant to unite her. Stanley Kwan cuts between the lacquered, lamplit past and a brisk, indifferent modern city, and the contrast does the mourning for him. Mui won Best Actress at the Golden Horse Awards, and the film took Best Film and Best Director at the Hong Kong Film Awards. It is the clearest case for why those two stars still matter so much to Hong Kong audiences.