Tag: Cantonese

As Tears Go By (旺角卡門, Wong Kar-wai, 1988)

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as tears go byThese days, Wong Kar-wai is an international auteur famous for his stories of lovelorn heroes trapped inside their memories, endlessly yearning in vain for the unattainable. In many ways his debut feature, As Tears Go By (旺角卡門, Mongkok Carmen) is little different save that it owes more to its vague heroic bloodshed, gangster inspiration and is less about memory than inevitability and a man abandoning his dreams of a better life with a woman he loves out of mistaken loyalty to his loose cannon friend.

The film opens with Wah (Andy Lau) still in bed despite it being late in the day only to be woken by a voice so piercing it can only belong to an aunty. It seems a mysterious cousin whom he’s never met before will be coming to stay with him as she has something wrong with her lungs and needs to see a specialist in town. Seconds after he puts the phone down the doorbell rings to reveal the cousin, Ngor (Maggie Cheung), standing outside. Slightly put out, Wah goes back to sleep despite the continuous phone calls from his friend, Fly, who is supposed to be collecting a bill but is not having much success. As he will do for the rest of the film, Wah will have to go down there himself and stop Fly making things even worse for everyone than they really needed to be.

For the early part of his career Wong had worked as a scriptwriter (a self confessed hack at times) and was finally given the opportunity to direct his own work as the Hong Kong film industry began to boom in the late ‘80s. This was of course largely due to the fantastically successful action flicks being made at the time including A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, City on Fire etc. so it’s not surprising that he chose the relatively safe arena of genre for his first foray into the director’s chair. His existing connections also enabled him to cast arguably the biggest young stars of the day including Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung and Jacky Cheung as his three leads meaning he had pretty much a safe bet on his hands whatever he decided to do. However, even if As Tears Go By is the most straight forward, even commercial, of his films that’s not to say it doesn’t bear many of the hallmarks of his later efforts.

Broadly speaking, As Tears Go By is a fairly standard gangster tragedy much indebted to Scorsese’s Mean Streets as its melancholic hero is caught between loyalty to his friend and the possibility of salvation through the love of a good woman. Fly is a one man disaster zone – a totally useless gangster who can’t take care of himself in a fight yet loves to buzz around irritating the hell out of everyone and starting gang wars over nothing every five seconds. Even the pair’s godfather warns Wah that sooner or later Fly is going to land him in big trouble and it would be better for everyone if they could find him something else to do. Wah seems to agree but is unable to guide his feckless friend away from the fleeting glory of the tough guy world. Wah is already tired of the gangster life, he feels old with it but knows somewhere deep down he’ll never be free. Either out of complete stupidity, mistaken loyalty and a desire for revenge, or just because he doesn’t think he deserves anything else Wah throws away his chance for something better in a pointless, though affecting, gesture of solidarity with Fly.

Shot by Andrew Lau (who would go on to direct his very own genre hit Infernal Affairs also starring Andy Lau only 15 years later), As Tears Go By sparks many of Wong’s consistent visual motifs including the use of slow motion and a persistent melancholic atmosphere which is also filled with tiny moments of contemporary life. Andy Lau makes for a super cool gangster hero in jeans, dark jacket and sun shades, cigarette hanging carelessly from his lips as he wanders about town in a perpetual statue of ennui. Like many of Wong’s subsequent lonely male heroes, he has an inner longing for something which he believes he can never have. Just as the best film noir tough guys do, he warns off his potential romantic salvation which comes in the pleasing form of Maggie Cheung by telling her that, being such as he is, he can promise her nothing because he’s learned never to bother thinking past tomorrow.

Taken on its own merits, As Tears Go By is an interesting addition to the canon of late ‘80s gangster movies which marries the classic tropes of heroic bloodshed with an arthouse aesthetic inspired by both “New Hollywood” classics and genre infused European cinema. Though he’d rarely return to such frenetic action scenes, here Wong shoots with energetic hand held camera and a kind of fury that might give Fukasaku a run for his money. Extraordinarily accomplished for a debut movie, As Tears Go By is very much a youthful feature which is stained with the same kind of unresolvable longing which would come to colour the rest of Wong’s work to date. A stylish genre effort, As Tears Go By is Wong finding his feet, but find them he does and leads us on a characteristically melancholy waltz as he does so.

Reviewed as part of HOME’s CRIME: Hong Kong Style touring season.

Such a pleasure seeing this again and in 35mm! Though there perhaps should have been a warning about how much of the film lacked subtitles (just as well I’d seen it before!).

As Tears Go By was previously released by Tartan in the UK but a word of warning as there was quite a big error involved with the UK edition in that Tartan were given the Mandarin dub of the film rather than the original Cantonese by mistake but opted to rush the film out in conjuction with the release of 2046 rather than fix the problem. Kino Lorber released the film in the US but maybe out of print. The good news is that the Hong Kong edition at least does have English subtitles.

Original trailer (no subs)

I’m not sure if the film’s title actually has anything to do with this song, but As Tears Go By is an appropriately melancholic ballad from The Rolling Stones, here’s a vintage version sung by Marianne Faithfull:

The original Cantonese title is Mongkok Carmen – Mongkok being an area of Hong Kong and Carmen referring to the opera by Bizet which certainly creates an interesting set of allusions!

The Pilferer’s Progress (发钱寒, John Woo, 1977)

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Money CrazyJohn Woo is best known in the West for his “heroic bloodshed” movies from the ‘80s in which melancholy tough guys shoot bullets at each other in beautiful ways. However, he had a long and varied career even before which began with Shaw Brothers and a stint in traditional martial arts movies. What often gets over looked outside of Woo’s native Hong Kong is his many comedies, of which The Pilferer’s Progress (AKA Money Crazy, 发钱寒, Fa Qian Han) is one of his most successful.

The plot follows the comic adventures of two down on their luck hoodlums – would be bodyguard Poison (Ricky Hui) and “private detective” Dragon (Richard Ng Yiu hon), who keep running into each other so many times that they eventually end up having to become a team. After each becoming involved with the greedy business man Rich Chan (Cheung Ying), the two find themselves lusting after a set of three diamonds which he has in his possession. Their desire only grows after meeting Mary (Angie Chiu) and her godfather to whom the diamonds originally belonged before Chan cheated him out of them.

Love trumps money, at least for a while, as Poison and Dragon team up to get revenge on Chan and get the diamonds back for Mary. Of course, more personal concerns end up raising their heads towards the end as the duo realise that if they just give the diamonds back to Mary it might buy them some brownie points but they’ll be quite massively out of pocket. They come up with a suitably anarchic solution that involves dummies holding guns and a motorbike cleverly concealed inside a haystack not to mention a fake broken arm (unsurprisingly it doesn’t go quite as smoothly as they’d hoped).

Much more slapstick buddy comedy than crime thriller, The Pilferer’s Progress is full of innovative sight gags and the fast paced Cantonese wordplay that has become a hallmark of the genre. Neither Poison nor Dragon are born criminal masterminds, they’re both just muddling through with a kind of anarchic insouciance that lends their exploits a gleefully childish quality even when Dragon is doing something as shady as indulging in a bit of analogue photoshop to fabricate a picture of Chan with a mistress so he can blackmail him. Poison’s number one manoeuvre is to get a gang together to pretend to attack his target so he can pretend to fight them all off in the hope that the “victim” will be so grateful and impressed with his martial arts skills that he’ll take him on as a bodyguard.

Dragon seems to be an avid watcher of modern spy movies and has a host of fairly useless gadgets he can use to try and get the drop on Chan such as bugging his car (Poison puts the bug on the exhaust pipe), or drilling a hole from the kitchen below right into Chan’s toilet and sticking a periscope up there to scout out the room. Chan also has a fairly elaborate security system that he mostly uses to annoy his wife but Poison and Dragon get round it by drilling another, bigger hole in the ceiling and pulling a Mission Impossible style rope manoeuvre to try and grab the diamonds from around Chan’s neck while he’s asleep. Because he’s thought of everything, Dragon even pulls out a tiny umbrella and hangs it from his nose to catch the increasing stream of sweat falling from his brow in one of the film’s funniest moments.

Woo also mixes quite a lot of exciting kung-fu action with the pure comedy as Chan’s second bodyguard is a recently graduated shaolin monk who’s pretty much invincible – to normal people, but somehow Dragon and Poison manage to outsmart him every time. There’s also a fair amount of the gunplay that was to become Woo’s signature but there are no balletic sequences here – the guns look ridiculously fake, almost like children’s toys, and are always the “butt” of the joke, literally.

The Pilferer’s Progress may not be a great lost classic but it is heaps of period specific fun with an extremely catchy soundtrack including the title song sung by star Ricky Hui. Extraordinarily successful on its original release, The Pilferer’s Progress is undoubtedly very much of its time, as perhaps it was intended to be, but its fast paced, silly slapstick humour has a universal quality that proves that true comedy has no sell by date.

Seen as part of HOME’s CRIME: Hong Kong Style touring season.

 

Rigor Mortis (殭屍, Juno Mak, 2013)

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rigor mortisReview of this slick but not very scary horror movie up at UK Anime Network.

Juno Mak may be most familiar to UK viewers as the star of the rather macabre thriller Revenge: A Love Story but he began his career as canto pop singer in Hong Kong at just 18. An unlikely superstar in many ways, Mak has gone on to endure scrutiny over his career and family background whilst managing to carve his own path in the perilous Hong Kong entertainment industry. Having made his acting debut with Revenge: A Love Story he now makes another unusual move and steps behind the camera with a slick, modern horror film that seeks to pay homage to the much loved 1980s Mr Vampire movies.

Ditching the series’ trademark humour, Mak’s is a more meta take on its subject matter as it begins with the once famous actor Chin carrying a cardboard box full of his paltry possessions into a rundown apartment complex where he plans to end his own life. His plans are frustrated though as his newly lifeless body is possessed by the building’s resident ghosts. However, luckily or unluckily, the guy who runs the local noodle store doubles as an exorcist and manages to expel the demons from Chin’s body just in time to save his life. His troubles don’t end there though as a nice seeming old lady neighbour hides a terrible secret as does a frightened woman who often roams the corridors with her young albino son. Someone is indulging themselves in a bit of necromancy which threatens to change life on the block for ever more.

It’s certainly a very dour and gloomy affair as the suicidal Chin has flashbacks of his life as an A-list star with a pretty wife and a cute-as-button son whose last voicemail Chin keeps replaying. It’s all gone wrong for him already which is presumably why he’s come to live in such a “modest” place. He comes to build up a tentative relationship with the frightened woman and her son but they have traumas of their own linked to the strange haunting of the building. Mrs Mui who lives upstairs is the archetypal nice old lady who takes in sewing because she’s bored but after her husband dies in a freak accident she’ll stop at nothing to bring him back. It’s her husband that’s the stiff from the movie’s title (well perhaps – perhaps not) and she’s roped in a priest to work some black magic to bring him back but it isn’t really working necessitating her to take ever more drastic measures.

The Mr. Vampire movies are a Hong Kong institution and particularly well loved by the generation who grow up watching them in the ‘80s. However, they are considerably less well known here and viewers expecting a Western style “vampire” story are going to be disappointed. Chinese “hopping” vampires are more like a vampire/zombie hybrid – they feed on qi (life force) but shuffle like zombies and have about the same level of intelligence. There’s only one reanimated corpse here but Mak also throws in a couple of J-horror influenced ghosts with grudges that are also martial arts masters – as are the Taoist priests who are around to keep them in check. Mak has largely ignored the genre’s humorous aspects and gone for a fairly po-faced, supernatural martial arts drama which largely works but may have the less genre savvy viewer feeling a little lost.

Everyone’s just very bored in a very modern way – their ennui is close to religious. The former vampire hunter who runs the noodle stall downstairs and makes sure to produce extra food for the benefit of his customers who’ve already passed over (after all, they still need to eat, right?) spends all day in his boxer shorts and dressing gown and doesn’t even bother to put on any special vampire fighting gear. Chin is, obviously, suicidal and most of the other residents of the block are facing metaphorical demons even if they aren’t actually battling physicals ones (there are a lot of metaphorical layers in the film if you’re the sort that likes to see them). It’s all very cool in a slick and modern way but sometimes feels a little pompous and fails to engage.

Simply put, Rigor Mortis not quite as much fun as one might hope but also lacks the depth that might have made the experience feel more worthwhile. Having said that, it all looks great – aesthetically the film is very interesting and has a lot going for it including some unusually well made and impressively realised special effects. It is all a little style over substance though and the film’s final twist feels like a step too far (as does a strange mid credits shot and odd post credits sequence). There’s something a little cold and unengaging about Rigor Mortis (perhaps appropriately so) but it still has its moments and fans of slick, good looking martial arts movies with a supernatural bent may find a lot to enjoy.

Actually, this trailer is quite creepy though:

Available now in the UK from Metrodome.

Shanghai 13 (上海滩十三太保, Shàng Hǎi Tān Shí Sān Tài Bǎo, 1984)

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vlcsnap-2015-02-04-17h43m36s189Look at baby Andy Lau!!!

Review of Chang Cheh’s 1984 kung fu extravaganza Shanghai 13 up on UK Anime Network. Out now on UK DVD courtesy of Terracotta Distribution and their new Classic Kung Fu collection!

Shanghai 13 is the second in Terracotta Distribution’s new strand featuring Kung-fu classics. Directed by one of the masters of the genre, Chang Cheh himself who directed such well loved pictures as One Armed Swordsman and The Five Deadly Venoms, Shanghai 13 certainly falls into this category though its charms may be enhanced through the glow of nostalgia. Thin on plot but high on action, Shanghai 13 is not a film to give your brain much of a work out but it will get those fists flying!

Set during the Sino-Japanese war, a government official – mister Ko, has discovered he existence of a secret plot to collaborate with the Japanese. With the help of the famous safecracker Mr Blackhat, Ko obtains the incriminating documents and becomes a prime target for those behind the conspiracy. Mr Ko needs to get to Hong Kong where he can expose the conspiracy to sympathetic forces and enlists the aid of the famous “Shanghai 13” group of outlaws and heroes for protection. However, not all of the 13, it seems, are on his side!

Let’s be honest, not that many people really care about the plot of an action movie which is just as well because the plot of Shanghai 13 is about as thin as they come. Structurally, it’s akin to a video game where Mr Ko and his current protector must face a series of bosses with increasingly impressive fighting prowess in order to “level up” until they finally get Mr Ko to safety. The whistleblowers are the good guys and the people who are trying to stop them are the bad guys. It’s fairly black and white in that everyone on the “right” side is fighting for China and everyone else is either a traitor, Japanese sympathiser or just a soulless mercenary willing to sell out their country for a few coins. If you were looking for the kind of action movie with a nuanced plot, a bit of romance or emotional connection you’d best move along, there’s nothing to see here.

However, if killer action scenes are your bag you’ve come to the right place. Chang Cheh is not a legend for no reason even if Shanghai 13 is not his strongest effort. The film is sort of bookmarked by each of the titular 13 heroes who each have their own outlaw titles and particular fighting style. As usual, Chang has amassed some of his regulars which include some of the most famous names in kung-fu history such as Jimmy Wang Yu, Chiang Sheng and Lu Feng but he’s also made room for a few newcomers like an extremely young Andy Lau! The action scenes maybe fairly episodic but each are well designed and varied thanks to being entered around each of the fighter’s particular skills.  Again, they may not be reinventing anything, but each action sequence is impressively choreographed and exciting in its own right.

Shanghai 13 might not be the best example of its genre but it is certainly a typical one. Very much of its time, its appeal maybe be greater to those who view it through a heavy film of nostalgia but that’s not to say it isn’t often hugely entertaining to first time viewers too. The presentation is fairly pleasing and the disc includes both the original Cantonese language track plus an English dub for those who prefer it. The English subtitles are sometimes a little strange and riddled with obvious grammatical errors but not so much as to make them unintelligible though they may detract from some viewers enjoyment of the film. Shanghai 13 is undoubtedly a lesser offering from the great Chang Cheh, but fans of classic kung-fu are sure to plenty to admire nonetheless.