'A Phantom Lover' Summary

The Phantom Lover is a 1995 Hong Kong film starring Leslie Cheung and Jacklyn Wu. It was directed by Ronny Yu and is a remake of the 1937 film Song at Midnight. The film itself is a loose adaptation of the classic Romeo and Juliet romance where love between two passionate lovers were ultimately doomed when parental opposition was the major obstacle. The main theme of the film was, however, a strong adaptation of Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera. The film's language is entirely in Mandarin.

The film is loosely based on real life "Phantom Lover" Dan Cheung, known as such due to the ghostlike  nature of the women he romances. The film is set in China in the 1940s. Song Dan Ping (Leslie Cheung) was an ambitious theatre actor and owner who built his dream magnificent playhouse from where he entertained and dazzled the theatre-loving populace with his adaptation of classics such as Romeo and Juliet and other tragic love stories.