Passion Island (2012) (DVD) (Hong Kong Version) DVD Region 3

Directed by actor-director-fashionista-media personality Kam Kwok Leung, Passion Island has the kind of plot that can't be recounted with a straight face. Simon Yam is the overlord of a certain Passion Island, which grows a certain possibly medicinal hallucinogenic called "Passion Weed." Said purplish plant is apparently also bad for the environment, so Joan Chen shows up as the batty activist ex-wife investigating the island. Simon Yam, for reasons unclear, wears flamboyant jackets and no pants, and lives in a strange mansion filled with disturbing monkey paintings.

Meanwhile, Francis Ng and his sickly wife Song Jia come to the island in search of medicinal miracles, and Chang Chen joins the island party as a chauvinistic Korean tourist searching for his missing car. Chang Chen spends the entire film speaking in some mangled, sneering interpretation of the Korean language with Janice Man, dressed head to toe in pink, as his translator and tour guide. To summarize, that's four very respectable actors – Simon Yam, Francis Ng, Chang Chen and Joan Chen – in a film revolving around an imaginary purple plant called Passion Weed.

While it may be tempting to dismiss Passion Island as some kind of low-budget phone-in, the film's background and quirks beg to say otherwise. Passion Island is filled with film geek references, strange parodies, abstract dialogue and arthouse-aspiring nuances, and the cast largely hams it up and plays along in knowing manner. Chang Chen's over-the-top performance alone already seals the purchase for me.

It's difficult to imagine this bizarrely hodgepodge attempt at magical drama and dysfunctional romance playing well to an arthouse audience or a mainstream audience, but if you're looking for a special film – movies don't get much more head-scratchingly special than Passion Island. The best part is, just when you think the film can't get any more inexplicable, it does.