Where Fleur and Chan committed suicide
- Hill Road, Shek Tong Tsui
This slope is still here. Yi Hung was at the top.
Yi Hung, the lavish brothel where Fleur works as a courtesan, is one of the most prominently featured locations in the movie. It’s where the couple falls in love and later agrees to a suicide pact after realising that Chan’s family will never allow him to marry Fleur. The star-crossed lovers overdose on raw opium, vowing to meet again in the afterlife, where they can be together forever.
Yuen-Ting: “What are you laughing about?” Fleur: “Yi Hung Brothel is now a kindergarten!”
53 years later, Shek Tong Tsui looks very different from how Fleur remembers it. Feeling lost and disoriented, Yi Hung is the first place she wanders to in hopes of finding Chan. Once there, she finds out that the brothel has become a kindergarten…
Hill Road Flyover
You’ll now find Hill Road’s famous, snake-like flyover located next to where Yi Hung used to be. The flyover opened in 1981, just a few years before Rouge was filmed. Fleur isn’t the only ghost who has wandered around the unusually tall road: every year, during the seventh month of the Lunar calendar, a three-day-long Ghost Festival takes place underneath the flyover. Workers construct a magnificent bamboo open-air theatre along the street slopes for the occasion. The festival kicks off with a street parade in Shek Tong Tsui, and there are Chiu Chow opera performances every night to “please the spirits”.
Remembering Anita Mui
Anita Mui, the actress who plays Fleur, died of cervical cancer on December 30, 2003. She left behind a crowd of heartbroken fans and a legacy as one of Hong Kong’s all-time biggest stars. 15 years after her death, the Anita Mui Fan Club organised a 'Rouge' movie viewing on Hill Road. About 200 fans showed up and quietly watched the movie to commemorate her.
“The next day, March 8, 1934, at 11 pm, we committed suicide at Yi Hung Brothel. I later heard from the prostitutes who died that prostitution was banned the following year.”
An award-winning story
With its tragically romantic story, talented leads and elaborate sets, ‘Rouge’ proved to be an instant box-office hit and won six awards at the 1988 Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress. The untimely deaths of both its leading actors (Leslie Cheung died of suicide on April 1st, 2003) further add to the movie’s cult status and elegiac atmosphere.