Review of The World of Suzie Wong (1960) by Simon M — 11 Mar 2010

I'm a rabid Nancy Kwan fan, so I admit to bias in this review -- I like this movie because she is in it -- because she is young, and because she is beautiful. I think this movie started my first fantasies about beautiful Eurasian women.

While the story is about Asian prostitutes, Suzie (Nancy Kwan) is more than a common whore -- less than a high-priced call girl, and more like a classy rent-a-wife. She is beautiful, she knows it, and she can be choosy. She tends to stay with one client as an kept woman until it ends, or fate intervenes. Her paramours are well heeled and sometimes influential, and offer her comfort and means. But they don't offer her the human intimacy, legitimacy and marriage she knows her fallen status deny her -- that she can never achieve except in her private dreams.

As an older, starving artist with limited means, Robert Lomax (Wm Holden) would ordinarily have little chance with her. Yet by employing her as a model for his paintings, Suzie comes to respect him as a tender and caring human being who cares about her as a person, and not just as a sex object.

That Lomax falls in love with Suzie is no mystery. Young, beautiful Asian girls are a continuing source of fantasy for men. And the older the man is, very often the stronger is the fantasy. But Asian women more often choose a man for the material comfort he can provide her. So Suzie's choosing of Lomax, despite his obvious limitations on wealth, makes it a love story. She gives him the only gift she has to bestow -- herself, without a price tag on it. It is for Suzie, a very special gift.

Lomax's white, upper class circle of friends in Hong Kong don't necessarily frown on Asian mistresses -- as long as they are kept discreet. But they don't readily accept them into their circle of public acquaintances either. While Lomax is becoming infatuated with Suzie, he does not like her lifestyle, and this understandably causes him to doubt her as a viable life partner. But then losing her to a rival reveals to him that he has fallen inextricably in love with her.

Lomax pursues Suzie, and wins her back. The movie ends with them back together, but the novel continues on with the Lomax's struggles with Suzie's past, and his lingering doubt about Suzie's loyalty and commitment to him.

If I have one criticism about the storyline, it is that Suzie's child by a former paramour is killed off by a convenient typhoon. My experience in real life is that children of such relationships are all too often abandoned. By killing off the child, the often difficult social complication of such children is avoided.

I have through my years come to know many such couples as Robert Lomax and Suzie Wong. And I have even had my own version. Many times it works out, but more often it does not. I especially like this movie, not because it is realistic, which it is not, but because it is a story of hope and realization of that hope, which I suppose caters to my own fantasies, and lends some optimism to them.