'THE key to survival,' pondered Julie Riva in March 1992, 'is doing everything that's available.' She had just arrived in Hong Kong for a three-week holiday during which she planned to stage her New York-honed cabaret/revue The Pleasures of Chinese Torture at the now-defunct Soho nightspot.
Now, about 21 months later, Riva is still in Hong Kong and talking about some of the things that became available to her. 'He beat me up, tied my hands together, threw me on to a table, kicked me as I was crawling across the floor, then threw me through another table. Then he scalded me with hot water, raped me and finished me off with a bunch of chopsticks. It was such hard work. I was black and blue all over.' That nightmare scenario represented Riva's most dramatic and important contribution in her new career - that of a Category III actress. 'He' was Anthony Wong, the star of The Untold Story - a grisly based-on-fact celluloid shocker about a mass murderer in Macau.
Riva's role made the public sit up and pay attention. Previously, she had played another murder victim in the horrific Dr Lamb and appeared in a handful of 'unmemorable films'. She is currently to be seen on Hong Kong screens playing a rape victim in another Wong vehicle, Love to Kill.
'I'm very proud of it,' said Riva, dressed in black leather-and-lace dress, jaunty leather cap, jacket and ankle boots, of her performance in The Untold Story. 'To me it's like high drama. It's like taking a slice of drama to its highest state, to the end of the road - to see how far you can go.' Not the sort of comment you associate with Hong Kong's pouting band of Category III actresses. They mostly give the impression of having appeared in a sexually-oriented role because of coercion, extortion or desperation. Anything but a determination to create powerful drama.
Not so Riva, who is almost disturbingly serious about on-screen sex. So much so, she recently conceptualised, scripted and then sold a film, tentatively titled Primal Scream, to renowned producer Chua Lam. Riva has raised the financing, will star in the film, style it and most probably cross the 't's and dot the 'i's on its subtitles too.
Production is due to begin in early January, and if Riva has her way she will two months later be in possession of a film unlike anything seen in Hong Kong, or perhaps the world.
