SINGAPORE : "Help Me Eros" doesn’t need Cupid to come to its rescue. But it does need its director to sober up.

Throughout this heartfelt but meandering erotica film, you’ll see Taiwanese actor-turned-director Lee Kang-sheng smoking weed on screen. He plays Ah Jie, a former stockbroker who’s taken to smoking pot all day and calling up suicide counsellor Chyi (Jane Liao). Meanwhile, sexy provincial lass Shin (Yin Shin) arrives to work in what could be described as Ah Jie’s neighbourhood karaoke bar and betel nut store.

Suffice to say that their lives become entangled as Ah Jie looks to the two women for guidance and sexual companionship, respectively. Lee has obviously taken a leaf from his mentor — the director Tsai Ming-liang who produces this film too — in creating a brooding and haze-filled movie that provokes as much as it titillates (the buxom F4 Girls star as Shin’s colleagues).

But, we would stop short of describing the R21 movie’s multiple sex scenes as fully gratuitous. Lee beautifully frames the characters’ relationships inside a neon-lit surreal world, where everyone comes to terms (or not) with their loneliness and isolation.

While "Help Me Eros" could do without its ridiculously sappy soundtrack, it is ultimately a romantic film. At one point, Ah Jie literally chases his dreams in the form of a truck announcing the day’s winning lottery tickets — which leads up to the film’s visually poignant finale of lottery tickets raining down on its forlorn inhabitants.

The quest for luck, not just love, is in the air. - TODAY/sh