"Naked Rose" is a straight-to-video Hong Kongese movie from the '90s, and if you've ever seen one of those before, you at least know what to expect in terms of hard subtitling: we get a row of Asian characters on top with the English on the bottom in white, and a contrast on the screen so high that you can't read either.
With this particular film, I don't know if legible subtitles would have made any difference anyway. The plot, if it can even be said to have one, is very confusing. Actual scenes seem to be unsure as to what they are about, or what we are supposed to think about them. Take for instance a rape scene that segues into a typical erotic softcore montage of sex in different positions. Was that really a rape or what?
Perhaps the filmmakers were just trying to milk some nudity out of the encounter. And boy, do they. The movie is full of it, and is basically a soft-core sex film.
The plot, as good as I can tell, is about a naive young woman who wants to become a model. She barely escapes eviction when two policemen pay the rent for her, but then apparently rape her. She goes to some sleazy photographers and gets naked, a possibly raped again. She meets a beautiful woman who may be the madam of a brothel and possibly joins her workforce. Somewhere along the way she encounters a photographer who may not be as sleazy as the other(s).
A good deal of guesswork was involved in the above description. Would I have found the movie easier to understand if I could have read all the subtitles? Quite likely. Would I have enjoyed it more? I doubt it. I didn't see anything on the screen that was particularly interesting. If you're after soft-core HK flicks, there's a bunch of better ones out there, like "Erotic Ghost Story", "Sex and Zen", "Screwball '94", "Girls Unbutton". "Naked Rose" seems to have been deservedly forgotten.
