Amphetamine is a 2010 Hong Kong film starring Byron Pang and Thomas Price. It revolves around the story of a Chinese fitness trainer, Kafka, who meets Daniel, a business executive. The film is directed by acclaimed Hong Kong Chinese filmmaker Scud, the production-crediting name of Danny Cheng Wan-Cheung. It was nominated for a Teddy Award at the Berlin International Film Festival of 2010. It explores several themes traditionally regarded as 'taboo' in Hong Kong society in an unusually open, convention-defying way, and features full-frontal male nudity in several scenes. It is the third of seven publicly released films by Scud. The six other films are: City Without Baseball in 2008, Permanent Residence in 2009, Love Actually... Sucks! in 2011, Voyage in 2013, Utopians in 2015 and Thirty Years of Adonis in 2017. His eighth film, Naked Nation, is currently in production.
Plot
Set after the 2008 financial collapse, the story follows Kafka, a swimming instructor, when he meets Daniel, a wealthy investment banker who changes his life. Daniel is openly gay, and helps Kafka to come out of the closet, despite Kafka's being Catholic and seemingly straight, and they quickly fall in love. Their relationship is complicated by Kafka's erratic behaviour, stemming from habitual abuse of amphetamine. Also a contributing factor is his impotence, which can be attributed to when he was violently gang-raped by three men, and sodomised with a wooden stick, after saving their original target, a woman. After the death of his mother, Kafka goes into a tailspin, raping Daniel's best friend, Linda, and flooding his and Daniel's apartment. When Daniel tries to console Linda, the two end up having sex, and Kafka sees them. The next morning, Daniel does amphetamine with Kafka, and Kafka confesses that despite everything he's done wrong, he still loves Daniel. Daniel affirms their relationship by asking Kafka to return to Australia with him, where they can get married, but Kafka asks for more time. At Daniel's going away party, Kafka is stripped totally naked, painted with silver body paint and calligraphy, and given large, white angel wings to wear. He then jumps off of the balcony of the apartment, attempting to fly, but escapes mostly uninjured. When he wakes up and doesn't see Daniel, Kafka escapes from the hospital and looks for him on the bridge they visited on their first date. Distraught and hallucinating from detox, he jumps off the bridge, into the still-frozen water and dies, with his final thoughts being those of him and Daniel, together and swimming.
