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‘Ghost Story’ to End Hong Kong Series

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

The Monica 4-Plex concludes its Hong Kong Premiere Showcase series Wednesday with a one-week run of Nam Lai-Choi’s naughty and charming period piece “Erotic Ghost Story” (Monica 4-Plex), which features three ravishing Chinese “fox fairy” sisters--So-so (Man Su), Fei-fei (Kyoko Kamimura) and Hua-hua (Amy Yip). They’ve been granted exquisite mortal form in return for doing good deeds, but they’ve just entered a 36-day probationary period, the end of which they will drop their “human frames” and achieve immortality. However, if they do not remain virtuous during this time they will revert to being foxes.

This proves quite a challenge for these deeply sensual women, who occupy a lavish townhouse but encounter a handsome young scholar, Wu Ming (Pal Shin), who’s holed up in a ramshackle cottage in the woods studying for his exams. In very short order we’re wondering how Wu and the sisters are ever going to pass their respective tests.

“Erotic Ghost Story” hasn’t the style and sophistication of “Sex and Zen” (in which the statuesque Yip starred) and in fact has some of the cornball humor of martial arts comedies. But it is genuinely erotic in the best sense: clearly Nam Lai-Choi not only adores but respects women--his film could even be said to have a feminist sensibility, acknowledging women’s intelligence and self-determination as well as their sexuality.

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Nam celebrates the physical beauty of his stars, who wear enough gorgeous silk and chiffon to encircle the globe. “Erotic Ghost Story” is not hard core, but it’s a scorcher, with its ample nudity and lovemaking presented tastefully. (310) 394-9741.

Nigol Bezjian’s “Chickpeas” (opening Friday at the Los Feliz 3 for a one-week run), which premiered at last year’s AFI Filmfest, is sincere in the best sense of the word. Writer-director Bezjian, in his feature debut, follows the lives of three young Armenian refugees from Beirut--played by Nazareth Kurdoghlian, Raffi Bekmezdjian and Khoren Ekmekjian--struggling to make new lives for themselves within the self-enclosed world of Los Angeles’ Armenian community.

There’s a universality to their immigrant story in not only trying to establish their own business but also in confronting the usual conflicts between ways old and new. The film’s lack of professional polish fortunately coincides with rather than contradicts its material, and on the whole it is a warm, occasionally ruefully humorous and engrossing experience. (213) 664-2169.

It is hard to believe that the Philippe Mora who has made such solid, straightforward pictures as the Great Depression documentary “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and the Australian World War II courtroom drama “Death of a Soldier” is the same Mora who has written and directed the disastrous, self-indulgent “Art Deco Detective” (Sunset 5, Fridays and Saturdays at midnight). Pretentious, tedious and talky, it spoofs ‘40s private-eye capers while telling of yet another crazed nuclear terrorist (Stephen McHattie), who’s threatening to blow up up L.A. while indulging in serial killings of prostitutes and pursuing his fixation with a Hollywood star.

Mora means to send up everything, contemporary paranoia and post-Cold War politics in particular, but it has all been done before and infinitely better. McHattie and Brion James, as a U.S. intelligence agent are strong, seasoned actors who’ve doubtlessly already moved on to better things. It’s a shame, however, to have wasted such a clever title--and the virile John Dennis Johnston in the title role as Hollywood detective Art Decowitz--on this film. (213) 848-3500.

Note: The New Beverly Cinema will be presenting two masterpieces of the Japanese cinema. Kenji Mizoguchi’s rapturous ghost story “Ugetsu” (1953) and Akira Kurosawa’s strikingly original “Rashomon” (1951), which introduced Japanese movies to postwar American audiences, screen Wednesday and Thursday. (213) 938-4038.

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