Chu Yuan is often credited with injecting surrealism and mystery into the Mandarin martial arts film of the 1970s; Intimate Confessions casts in bold relief Chu's perceptive grasp of genre conventions. This remarkable, scabrous film holds up the “perverse” to such notional martial arts chestnuts as loyalty, sacrifice, revenge, the relationship between master and disciple, and the exaltation of physicality. It's an audacious and inspired flip, one that gives Confessions its narrative jolt and emotional potency, and propels the film into harder-boiled territory than mere trafficking in gauzy, soft-core titillation. Imagine relocating the martial arts school to a brothel, transposing the martial arts master to the brothel's madam and the disciple to a prostitute who must be forcibly drilled in the arts of servicing men while secretly seeking bloody revenge against all who have wronged her. The frame is that of a murder mystery, with the requisite police investigation; the ambience is baroque atmospherics spiced with a whiff of terror.

Intimate Confessions is also shown Friday, May 9, in the series Born to Be Bad 2.