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If romantic relationships are irrational in essence, then Ocean Flame must be all about love. Basing his film on controversial Chinese writer Wang Shuo’s novel of the same title (which has already seen an adaptation in 2001, Love the Hard Way, starring Adrien Brody), writer-turned-director Liu Fendou is set to turn away a large portion of his audience by escalating the emotional violence of the ‘bad guy/innocent girl’ premise to a new level of abstraction.

Following the unconventional ‘love story’ between Li Chuan, an innocent young waitress (wonderfully acted by Monica Mok), and the dominating Wang Yao (Liao Fan), a small-time criminal whose profession consists of blackmailing unsuspecting patrons with his prostitution scam, the film is not so much a porn as it is an artfully done emo-porn, in spite of its violent and erotically charged content. If there are psychological depth and complexity to Liao’s exceedingly evil character, one will have to look beyond the fact that he forces Lichuan into prostitution, beats her up, taunts her with other women, and pushes her to kill herself – all of which make up the larger part of the film. The recurrent scenes on a deserted beach and its neighbouring cliff also take away any realistic sense of space and time, leaving an impression that the story takes place either in a vacuum or a character’s unconscious.

Although it has since been trimmed down from its 136-minute runtime at Cannes to the current 98 minutes – resulting in an elliptical yet elegantly edited mood piece – Ocean Flame’s challenging material may still feel tiresome and intolerable for an audience expecting anything other than a relentlessly grim story. At the end, whether one can even start to appreciate this intensely harrowing film will depend on a readiness to root for two totally twisted characters – understandably a tall order for most. Edmund Lee

Dir Liu Fendou, Category III, 98 mins, Opens Thursday 11