Hong Kong’s version of Go. This fast-paced, inventive and interesting comedy-drama from director Alan Mak delves into the lives of HK’s night-owl rave party attendees. However, instead of an examination of shallow Gen-X lives, we get a strangely lurid mystery involving a missing girl.

Mark Lui heads things off as Don, a rat race inhabitant who can’t remember his one-night tryst with a mysterious woman who left her filofax under his bed. Retracing his steps, he meets Nicole (the comely Jaymee Ong) at a rave and asks her if the filofax is hers. Her response is to drag Don into the toilet for a quickie - and from there the story takes strange and interesting turns.

It turns out that Nicole doesn’t own the filofax. It belongs to a girl named Sonia Au, who once dated Stephen (Terence Yin). Stephen is evidently pining for Sonia, much to the consternation of Ashley (Yoyo Mung), who meets Stephen after ending up with the filofax. Ashley suspects foul play has done away with Sonia. And so on and so on.

Rave Fever is nothing more than a candy-coated confection set against a sexy, neon-lit backdrop. The dance music, cool actors (Sam Lee shows up for one of his patented character turns) and hip time-shifting storytelling all add to the infectiously airy fun. Despite some tension, there is nary a serious moment in this film. Soul-searching and questions of youth are not seen in this movie. The characters just get on with it, and each chance meeting leads to the next with often entertaining results. 

There is a flirtation with darkness that the film attempts, but it leads to nothing more than an elaborate joke about the perils of overdrinking at rave parties. At that point, you realize the film means absolutely nothing. All that jumping around and head-banging leads to no important revelations about our lives. It’s just what these kids do, and it sure is fun watching it. Yep, this movie is really a lot like Go. (Kozo 1999)