Tag: Focus Hong Kong

Hong Kong 1941 (等待黎明, Leong Po-Chih, 1984)

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“Britain has reassured the people that it will not give up Hong Kong,” according to a radio broadcast at the beginning of Leong Po-Chih’s Hong Kong 1941 (等待黎明). The words have a kind of irony to them and not only because Britain did abandon the people following the Japanese invasion, but because the film was released on the eve of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in which it said something quite similar. 

But then again, the opening scenes are themselves quite critical of British rule as they, on the one hand, insist they aren’t going anywhere and, on the other, start evacuating women and children to “safer” areas of the commonwealth such as Australia. Out of work actor Fei (Chow Yun-fat) fled the Japanese incursion on the Mainland and came to Hong Kong, but now tries to stowaway abroad a boat going to Australia. He’s caught by a little British girl who speaks fluent Cantonese yet refers to him as her “slave” and insists that he “kowtow to me, now.” But then the girl suddenly adopts the persona of the Empress Dowager Cixi and demands the same. Fei makes the first of his many jumps into the water around Hong Kong, as if only in this liminal space can he be free. Anticipating the wave of migration occurring before and after the Handover, and also that of the present day, he and his friends Keung (Alexander Man Chi-leung) and Nam (Cecilia Yip Tung) set their sights on leaving to find Gold Mountain in Australia or America.

But they’re one day too late because the date of their departure is that the Japanese arrive in Hong Kong. Their haste to leave was in part caused by the fact that Nam’s father, Ha Chung-sun (Shih Kien), was trying to force her to go through with an arranged marriage her prospective groom didn’t want either. Nam is never really free as, as she points out, even after her father relents and allows Keung to marry her after she is raped by a police officer emboldened by the chaos and therefore worthless to him as currency, Keung never actually asked her and she’s in effect forced into a marriage with him instead. In fact, she returns to the shrine Keung lives in two find the two men constructing her marital bed for her with the double helix symbol of happiness already placed above it in an ironic expression of patriarchal oppression.

Indeed, her position is more precarious than either of the men and we see other families roughly cutting their daughters’ long hair to make them look like boys in fear of a rapacious Japanese army. But it largely turns out that it wasn’t so much the Japanese they needed to be worried about as the local population, experiencing a temporary limbo in which the social order has been suspended. Police officer Fa Wing (Paul Chun) who had acted as a lackey for Ha Chung-sun while constantly eying up Nam leads a gang of looters to Ha’s house to take their own revenge against his capitalistic oppression of them. Ha had largely made his money through rice profiteering and exploiting the local workforce. Recent layoffs at the warehouse had led to a labour riot, while Keung and his friends had been running a sideline skimming sacks of rice to sell on the black market. 

Ha and his henchmen anxiously await the arrival of the Japanese hoping that they will protect them from retribution, but the Japanese do not arrive fast enough. When they do, Ha collaborates and attempts to ingratiate himself with the Japanese officer in charge of the colony who once again takes a liking to Nam. General Kanezawa (Stuart Ong) also uses their poverty to starve them into submission, promising rice to anyone who will come and sing with him. The song he chooses is “Shina no Yoru” by Li Hsiang-lan, whom he describes as “their very own”, yet was actually a Japanese woman, Yoshiko Yamaguchi, groomed for stardom in Manchuria and marketed a Chinese star in propaganda films. Another song of hers, Ieraishan, can be heard earlier on the soundtrack as if heralding Japanese arrival. 

Though Nam tries to resist, Fei raises the trio’s arms in a cry of “banzai” in a moment of ostensible collaboration designed to buy them temporary safety. His philosophy and that of many others is to take the rice and deal with the rest later, which Fei does by becoming an enforcement officer with the Japanese to get papers that will allow all of them leave. He uses his position to help a gang of Mainlanders who are resisting the Japanese, and are, in fact, the last ones to stay behind and defend the colony, as well as well as save Keung when his attempt to rescue two friends who have been sold out for forced labour on another Japanese-controlled island by a local gangster backfires and he’s captured himself. 

Ironically enough, Fei had been the first one to try to leave and described himself as “selfish” after jumping back into the water to return to Nam and Keung who didn’t make the boat on time because they were trying to save a local eccentric everyone calls “emperor” played by the director himself. Fei is quite obviously in love with Nam, and she gradually falls for him in return though symbolically wedded to Keung, if not in the legal sense. Again, she has no say over her romantic future which is sorted out between the two men with Fei abiding to a code of honour in continuing to protect the relationship between Keung and Nam. Perhaps this echoes the way in which the Hong Kong people of 1941 or 1984 have little say in their future either as their fate is decided by two distant powers. Nevertheless, it leaves Keung feeling awkward and inadequate, realising that Nam likely prefers the smart and dynamic Fei over his constant failures and inability to protect her, though he is never jealous or resentful towards him only knowing that he is continually indebted. Yet it’s Nam who eventually strikes back for Hong Kong and for her own freedom while Fei looks on as children in the street play at beheadings as if they were Japanese soldiers. She embodies the spirit of Hong and carries it with her, and as the Chinese title of the film suggests, waits for a new dawn while accepting that just like old memories it will be replaced by what is to come. She speaks from a perspective that is both historical and uncertain, mourning the past while fearful of the future, but all the while continuing to live as one new dawn replaces another.

Hong Kong 1941 screened as part of this year’s Focus Hong Kong.

Trailer

The Black Tavern (黑店, Teddy Yip Wing-Cho, 1972)

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One of the reasons that martial arts films are so popular is that it’s often easy to tell who is good and who is bad. In general, the just hero vanquishes the source of evil and corruption, thereby restoring a sense of moral order to a world that may in other ways be chaotic. But chaotic is probably the best way to describe the world of The Black Tavern (黑店) in which the titular inn becomes a nexus of greed and villainy where it is impossible to tell who, if anyone, is good, while almost everyone is actually bad and the heroine only really intervenes in the closing scenes.

One way you can tell that something is very rotten at the Gao Family Inn is that the cook suddenly emerges from a pit underground carrying someone’s leg, which he then chops up and uses to make buns. No one ever mentions this again. It’s a just symbol of how corrupt and hellish this world has become. The inn is apparently the only staging post on this route, which is presumably how they continue to get custom despite bumping off their guests, taking all their stuff, and then chopping them up to put in buns to serve to the next unfortunate person who arrives in search of a bed for the night. 

But the reason so many venal bandits are drawn here is that a beggar monk (Dean Shek) tells them he saw vast riches fall out of a chest belonging to Hai Gangfeng, a former official returning to his home province with all his ill-gotten gains from accepting bribes. Assuming Gangfeng will be stopping at the inn, everyone who heard the monk is on their way there. Only, as it turns out, the man we thought was Hai Gangfeng is actually a bandit, “Whipmaster” Zheng Shoushan (Ku Feng), who cunningly pretended to be him to take over the inn and wait for the real Gangfeng’s arrival. He does not, however, seem to have anticipated so many other bandit gangs each more outlandish than the last having the same idea.

One turns up with a band of hopping vampires who turn out to be crooks in disguise, while another is wearing a horned helmet that gets stuck in things when he’s trying to fight. Of course, they’re all trying to kill each other so they can be the ones in control when Gangfeng finally arrives. What they don’t realise is that the whole thing’s a honeytrap designed to lure them all to the inn for just this purpose, so that they’ll all kill each other and spare the forces of justice some trouble. Those would be Zhang Caibing (Shih Szu), a disciple of the Lady Hermit making this a kind of extended universe film of the Cheng Pei-Pei classic. Continuing her mentor’s mission, she’s out to skim off the “scum of the martial arts world,” explaining to Shoushan that if he doesn’t like it, he should have thought of that before committing so many “evil deeds”. 

On the other hand, Caibing does seem to be enjoying this quite a lot so perhaps she’s not quite so entitled to the moral high ground as she’d like to think. While taking a leaf out of King Hu’s book, Yip adds an edge of slapstick absurdity in setting up elaborate action sequences with well-deserved pay offs and indulging in goreless yet extreme kills such as a series of surprise decapitations. Shoushan’s bladed whip becomes a versatile weapon but also an extension of his character in his cowardliness and lack of morality. It’s only really any good at long range, which means that he keeps his opponents at arms’ length rather than confront them directly as in the typical tests of skill that define a martial arts battle. He coils it around their necks, snake-like, then either pops their heads off or strangles them to death. Just like the innkeeper he killed off at the start, he seems to have genuine affection for his female companions but eventually meets a similar fate as his trademark whip is ironically turned against him. 

There’s also a genuine, if underplayed, sense of ambiguity in the attraction between the mysterious swordsman (Tung Li ) and Shoushan’s daughter that prevents him from killing her while suggesting that he too was on some level attracted to banditry. Even if he rides off in the end with Caibing, it does not appear that their relationship is romantic. Nor is he allowed to claim victory by swooping in when all seemed lost for Caibing during the final fight, immediately encountering difficulty with Shoushan who puts up a good fight that again seems contrary to his moral character in the amount of skill and effort needed to beat him. Indeed, it often seems as if he will win after all. This world will fall to men like him and turn into one giant Black Tavern. In the end, it’s a team effort that takes him down, including the strange intrusion of the beggar monk who was after all the person who started all this by repeating the rumour in the last rest stop and may or may not actually be working with Caibing. In any case, the incredibly fast-paced action sequences and the dark humour that accompanies them lend the film an epic quality despite its tight duration along with an ironic kind of cynicism that insists this world is simply too silly to be evil but that the scum of the martial arts world will pay all the same.

The Black Tavern screened as part of this year’s Focus Hong Kong.

Valley of the Shadow of Death (不赦之罪, Lam Sen & Antonio Tam Sin-yeung, 2024)

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A pastor’s faith is tested when a young man who was involved with the death of his teenage daughter arrives at his church in search of salvation in Lam Sen & Antonio Tam Sin-yeung’s In Valley of the Shadow of Death (不赦之罪). Though his faith tells him that he must forgive and that it is his duty to help this lost young man who has no one else, it is obviously incredibly difficult for him to reconcile his Christian philosophy with the reality of his guilt and anger.

It’s this contradiction that’s at the heart of the film in examining whether Pastor Leung (Anthony Wong Chau-sang) is merely a hypocrite who expounds on “the beauty of suffering,” while wallowing in his grief and fundamentally unable to put what he preaches into practice. But the problem is it’s Leung’s religiously that’s a part of the problem in that its oppressive qualities and implacable rigidity also contributed to his daughter’s death. It’s convenient for him to shift all of the blame onto Lok (George Au) because it means he doesn’t have to think about the impact of his own choices or indeed question his faith in God as his wife (Louisa So Yuk-Wah) has done. 

Mrs Leung also seems to blame her husband on some level and the relationship between the pair has become frosty in the extreme. A reporter arrives to interview Leung about his work while Mrs Leung goes out of her way to make as much noise as possible as she leaves for work. She has since lost her faith, unable to understand why God would do this to them, while Leung regards Lok’s arrival, like many things, as a test yet already knowing he has been found wanting. He does his best to force himself to treat Lok with kindness, but in the end, if God really did intend to give him a son in place of a daughter, Leung cannot accept him.

But Lok looks to Leung as a more literal kind of father anyway. He is genuinely moved by Christianity and sees something in it that he equates with salvation, but at the same time perhaps only because he thinks it will confer “forgiveness”. His problem is also that he doesn’t seem to understand what was wrong about what he did despite completing his prison sentence and assumed that everything would be fine once he repaid his debt to society. Only on learning that Ching is dead does he begin to feel guilty and understand the full impact of his actions. On his release he’d tried to contact Ching on a messenger app though it’s not quite clear for what purpose. Even if he really did want to apologise or try to make a mends, it’s a selfish thing to do given that she almost certainly would not want to ever hear from him again and his resurfacing in her life would only cause her further pain. 

In any case, the film uncomfortably muddies the waters in implying that Ching herself is also responsible for what happened to her, while Leung never really reckons with the new information he’s learned about his daughter who may not have been as sweet and innocent as he’d assumed her to be. Likewise, the fact that Lok had such a difficult life encourages us to sympathise with him and minimise his crime, but he made a clear choice to what he did and is also responsible for it. As Leung is fond of saying, everyone is a sinner, though he doesn’t always seem to accept the same about himself. Lok too maybe entitled to redemption, and helping him may be a way for Leung to make sense of his daughter’s death while atoning for his part in it, but if it’s a test from God it’s one he’s struggling with and largely beyond the limits of his faith. In truth, some of the ideological questioning seems confused or contradictory, more like a thought experiment than a real situation and Lok a hypothetical rather than a lost young man who’s done something unspeakable but still doesn’t really understand why it was wrong. Obsessed with the concept of “forgiveness”, he childishly thinks that winning it would annul his crime as if it didn’t happen in same the way that baptism washes away sin. Leung, meanwhile, cannot practice what he preaches and uses his religion, the very thing that made him fail his daughter, as a shield to avoid thinking about his own culpability. Only God can forgive, Leung’s fond of saying, but the person he needs forgiveness from the most may be himself. 

Valley of the Shadow of Death screened as part of this year’s Focus Hong Kong.

Trailer

Focus Hong Kong Returns to BFI Southbank 12th to 15th July

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Focus Hong Kong returns to the BFI this July with three highly anticipated recent releases and the long-awaited restoration of a 1980s classic.

Where the Wind Blows

Philip Yung’s long-awaited return after 2015’s Port of Call is a complex historical epic exploring the corruptions of colonialism as morally compromised cops Aaron Kwok and Tony Leung Chiu-wai forge dangerous connections with organised crime. Review.

A Guilty Conscience

A cynical lawyer’s existence is upended when a case he’d assumed would be easy ends in a bereaved mother being sent to prison for seventeen years for a crime she almost certainly did not commit in this often hilarious courtroom drama which puts social inequality on trial. Review.

Let it Ghost

Comedic horror anthology mixing scares and satire from first time director Wong Hoi.

Nomad (4K Restoration, Director’s Cut)

Heavily censored on its release, Patrick Tam’s 1982 classic stars a young Leslie Cheung as an aimless young man from a wealthy family who spends his time hanging out with friends at the beach until his cousin’s romance with a fugitive from the Japanese Red Army threatens to upset their idle days.

Screenings take place at the BFI, London, 12th to 15th July. Tickets are already on sale via the cinema’s website and you can keep up to date with all the latest news via Focus Hong Kong’s official website, Facebook Page, Twitter account, and Instagram channel.

Focus Hong Kong Returns to The Garden Cinema 24th June

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Focus Hong Kong returns to The Garden Cinema on 24th June with a double bill of two contemporary classics.

Memories to Choke On, Drinks to Wash Them Down

Leung Ming Kai and Kate Reilly’s four-part anthology attempts to capture the flavours of a Hong Kong in transition. Imbued with a gentle nostalgia the four stories do not so much eulogise as celebrate the island’s unique culture while perhaps provoking questions about an uncertain future in the face of political instability and widespread protest. Review.

Made in Hong Kong

Handover Hong Kong becomes a teenage wasteland for alienated youth in Fruit Chan’s seminal 1997 drama as a small time street punk finds himself on a quest to deliver the bloodstained letters of a high school girl picked up by his friend while bonding with another young woman suffering with a serious illness. Review.

Both screenings take place at The Garden Cinema, London, on 24th June. Tickets are already on sale via the cinema’s website and you can keep up to date with all the latest news via Focus Hong Kong’s official website, Facebook Page, Twitter account, and Instagram channel.

July Rhapsody (男人四十, Ann Hui, 2002)

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“Not every ending fulfils your expectations” a weary mother advises her son sharing long buried family secrets which will at least set them free if not perhaps happily. Scripted by Ivy Ho, Ann Hui’s July Rhapsody (男人四十) is as the Chinese title “a man at 40” implies a film about mid-life crises and quiet desperation as a middle-aged school teacher begins to resent the loss of his youth while transgressively drawn to a free-spirited student. 

Lam (Jacky Cheung Hok-Yau) describes himself as “stiff”, a “boring” man who teaches Chinese literature to disinterested students while privately consumed by a sense of inferiority observing with envy the yachts that litter the horizon on a trip to the beach with his son. At a reunion dinner he gets up with irritation when one of his former classmates now a wealthy financier tries to pay the bill for everyone insisting on paying his own way while perhaps exposing the sense of belittlement he feels around his more successful friends. His wife Ching (Anita Mui Yim-Fong) questions his decision pointing out that even if he could afford to pay his bit perhaps his friend Yue (Eric Kot Man-Fai) couldn’t and would feel equally insulted should Lam simply agree to pay his share too. To add insult to injury, one of his friends also wants to hire him to tutor his young son in classical Chinese poetry which leaves him feeling somewhat humiliated but on the other hand not wanting to turn the money down. 

These feelings of dissatisfaction with the way his life has turned out only intensify as he reaches the age of 40 and begins to feel his options narrowing wondering if this is really all there is. He and Ching recall a melancholy poem they learnt at school in which a scholar on a boat laments “the limitations of life” only for the poem to be ironically cut short when the couple’s younger son, Stone, comes to fetch his mum because the soup is boiling dry. Even without knowledge of the final revelations told in a two part story divided between a mother and a father to a son, we can gather that Lam married extremely young and became a father soon after. He studied at night school and became a teacher as a steady job to provide for his family and perhaps to a degree resents them for limiting his choices. His classmates, aside from Yue, all went on to find more lucrative careers while he lives in a small two bed flat snapping at his wife that he’s unlikely to find the money to buy a bigger one. 

When he irritably tells her a tube of glue they bought is “all dried up” it sounds like an insult and a way of describing their moribund relationship. Beginning to bond with free-spirited high school girl Wu (Karena Lam Ka-Yan), Lam initiates intimacy with Ching but then turns away leaving her lonely and disappointed. She meanwhile explains to him that a figure from their past whom he seems to resent has become ill and is all alone. She would like to care for him but only with Lam’s consent which he gives but grudgingly. Talking to her son, Ching admits that she isn’t sure if she’s helping this man out of pity or because she simply wants to see him suffer given the effect he has had on her life. Similarly Lam later confesses to Wu that he may have befriended Yue because he was a poor student and unpopular. At his side, Lam was always going to look good bearing out his sense of insecurity in wanting to be seen as the best, idolising his Chinese literature teacher and desperate for his praise only to find himself ironically echoing his transgressions in allowing himself to be seduced by a student. 

Ironically enough, Lam tells his son that he became a teacher because he sat behind Ching in class and wanted to stand out front so that he could see her face. Wu represents for him that same innocent teenage romance, but also a sense of the path not taken in her free-spiritedness and confidence. Lam followed the conventional path, did everything right, and now he’s unhappy. Wu rejects education and goes straight into business, supported by a wealthy father, planning to go travelling in India to look for new stock for her shop. His sons too perhaps echo his conflicting desires, Ang the older studious and responsible, and the younger Stone (changing his name to the cooler “Rocky”) uninterested in his studies. The melancholy poem which frequently recurs hints at a parting while husband and wife each attempt to resolve something but are left only with uncertainty and perhaps tragically in opposing positions in considering the further course of their lives. 

This very literary drama is related in a series of stories, Lam’s told to his son first in person and then in a letter, followed by Ching’s and the constant stream of classical Chinese poetry that floods the screen guiding the couple towards the expanse of the Yangtze River. As Ching had said, not every ending fulfils your expectations because in the end life is not so neatly packaged. There may be no real accommodation with middle-aged disappointment but there may be new ways forward to be found in resolving the traumatic past.

July Rhapsody screens at Garden Cinema, London on 10th July as part of Focus Hong Kong’s Making Waves – Navigators of Hong Kong Cinema.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Comrades, Almost a Love Story (甜蜜蜜, Peter Chan, 1996)

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“Fate brings people together, no matter how far” according to a wise old chef in early ‘90s New York. He’s not wrong though Peter Chan’s seminal 1996 tale of fated romance Comrades, Almost a Love Story (甜蜜蜜) is in its own way also about partings, about the failure of dreams and the importance of timing in the way time seems to have of spinning on itself in a great shell game of interpersonal connection. But then, it seems to say, you get there in the end even if there wasn’t quite where you thought you were going. 

As the film opens, simple village boy from Northern China Xiaojun (Leon Lai Ming) arrives in Hong Kong in search of a more comfortable life intending to bring his hometown girlfriend Xiaoting (Kristy Yeung Kung-Yu) to join him once he establishes himself. His first impressions of the city are not however all that positive. In a letter home, he describes the local Cantonese speakers as loud and rude, and while there are lots of people and cars there are lots of pickpockets too. It’s in venturing into a McDonald’s, that beacon of capitalist success, that he first meets Qiao (Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk), a cynical young woman hellbent on getting rich who nevertheless decides to help him by whispering in Mandarin realising he doesn’t understand the menu. Hailing from Guangdong, Qiao can speak fluent Cantonese along with some English and thus has much better prospects of succeeding in Hong Kong but takes Xiaojun under wing mostly out of loneliness though accepting a kickback to get him into an English language school where she piggybacks on lessons while working as a cleaner. Bonding through the music of Teresa Teng, they become friends, and then lovers, but Xiaojun still has his hometown girlfriend and Qiao still wants to get rich. 

As we later learn in one of the film’s many coincidences, Xiaojun and Qiao arrived on the same train if facing in different directions. Hong Kong changes each of them. When Xiaojun eventually manages to bring Xiaoting across the border, he’s no longer the simple village boy he was when he arrived while Qiao struggles with herself in her buried feelings for Xiaojun unwilling to risk the vulnerability of affection but visibly pained when confronted by Xiaojun’s responsibility to Xiaoting. She finds her mirror in tattooed gangster Pao (Eric Tsang Chi-Wai) who, like her, shrinks from love and is forever telling her to find another guy but is obviously hoping she won’t as afraid of settling as she is. 

For each of them this rootlessness is born of searching for something better yet the irony is as Xiaojun says that Hong Kong is a dream for Mainlanders, but the Mainland is not a dream for most in Hong Kong who with the Handover looming are mainly looking to leave for the Anglophone West. Qiao’s early business venture selling knock off Teresa Teng tapes fails because only Mainlanders like Teresa Teng so no-one wants to buy one and accidentally out themselves in a city often hostile to Mandarin speakers as Xiaojun has found it to be. What they chased was a taste of capitalist comforts, Qiao literally working in a McDonald’s and forever dressed in Mickey Mouse clothing which Pao ironically imitates by getting a little Mickey tattooed on his back right next to the dragon’s mouth. But when they eventually end up in the capitalist homeland of New York, a driver chows down on a greasy, disgustingly floppy hamburger while Qiao finds herself giving tours of the Statue of Liberty to Mainland tourists in town to buy Gucchi bags who tell her she made a mistake to leave for there are plenty of opportunities to make money in the new China. 

Ironically enough it’s hometown innocence that brings them back together. The ring of Xiaojun’s bicycle bell catches Qiao’s attention though she’d thought of it as a corny and bumpkinish when he’d given her rides on it in their early days in Hong Kong. Xiaojun had in fact disposed of it entirely when Xiaoting arrived partly for the same reason and partly because it reminded him of Qiao. The pair are reunited by the death of Teresa Teng which in its own way is the death of a dream and of an era but also a symbol of their shared connection, Mainlanders meeting again in this strange place neither China nor Hong Kong, comrades, almost lovers now perhaps finally in the right place at the right time to start again. Peter Chan’s aching romance my suggest that the future exists in this third space, rejecting the rampant consumerist desire which defined Qiao’s life along with the wholesome naivety of Xiaojun’s country boy innocence, but finally finds solid ground in the mutual solidarity of lonely migrants finding each other again in another new place in search of another new future. 

Comrades, Almost a Love Story screens at Soho Hotel, London on 9th July as part of Focus Hong Kong’s Making Waves – Navigators of Hong Kong Cinema.

Short clip (English subtitles)

Teresa Teng – Tian Mi Mi

Tales from the Occult (失衡凶間, Fruit Chan, Fung Chih-Chiang, Wesley Hoi Ip-Sang, 2022)

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A collection of Hong Kongers contend with the hidden horrors of the contemporary society in the first instalment in a series of anthology horror films, Tales from the Occult (失衡凶間,). Veterans Fruit Chan and Fung Chih-Chiang are accompanied by Wesley Hoi Ip-Sang making his directorial debut as the three directors each tackle lingering terrors as the protagonists of the three chapters are quite literally haunted by past transgressions from a pop singer on the edge consumed with guilt over a teenage trauma, to a sleazy financial influencer who might inadvertently have killed a hundred people, and the denizens of a rundown tenement who are too afraid to report a possibly dangerous presence to the police lest it damage the property value of their flats. 

In Wesley Hoi Ip-Sang’s opening instalment The Chink, a carefree high school girl chasing a stray cat stumbles on the body of a burglar who apparently fell from the rooftops and was trapped in a tiny cavity between two buildings. Some years later Yoyi (Cherry Ngan) has become a successful pop star but is still haunted by her failure to report the body to the police all those years ago worried that perhaps if she had he might have been saved though he had obviously been dead for some time when she found him. Her kindly psychiatrist uncle Ronald (Lawrence Cheng Tan-shui) tries to assuage her anxiety but fails to consider that there might actually be a dark presence in her new flat. Meanwhile, she’s also under considerable stress given that she’s in an ill-defined relationship with Alan, her married manager, who eventually brands her “mentally unstable”, and she’s somehow oblivious to the fact her high school best friend is clearly in love with her. Even so, as it turns out, perhaps you can also be haunted by the living while there are some threats that even the most well-meaning of psychiatrists is ill-equipped to cure. 

It’s ironic in a sense that Yoyi was provided with her new apartment as a path towards an illusionary freedom which is really only a means for Alan to exert greater control over her life while the heroine of Fung Chih-Chiang’s final sequence The Tenement has in a sense chosen seclusion in installing herself in a moribund tenement block in order to concentrate on her writing. The contrast between the two buildings couldn’t be more stark but even the tenement dwellers are paranoid about house prices while assuming the creepy, water-drenched presence encountered by author of pulpy internet novels Ginny (Sofiee Ng Hoi Yan) is an attempt by developers to scare them out of their homes amid Hong Kong’s horrifyingly competitive housing market. Still, like Yoyi they are each haunted by past transgressions but pinning the blame on former gangster Frankie Ho (Richie Jen) who was once accused of drowning a man. What began as a haunting soon descends into farce as they realise the “water ghost” seems to be a young woman who has passed away in their stairwell and decide to “dispose” of her with Frankie’s help to avoid a scandal destroying the value of their homes. But then, all is not quite as it seems as the sudden appearance of a journalist investigating a scandalous “love crime” makes clear. 

Fruit Chan’s middle chapter Dead Mall also takes aim at internet investigators and dodgy “influencers” as sleazy financial snake oil vlogger Wilson (Jerry Lamb) fetches up at a shopping centre surrounded by shoppers in masks to advertise that the mall is actually doing fine despite the economic downturn produced by the pandemic which he describes as worse than that of SARS. In reality the mall is “dead” with barely any customers and rows of shuttered stores, Wilson is simply doing a paid post in an attempt to raise its fortunes not least because the original mall was destroyed in a fire 14 years previously started by a carelessly discarded cigarette. Wilson is pursued not only by those who claim they lost money because of his terrible financial advice, but by a paranormal live streamer who has a separate grudge against him while he continues to refuse any responsibility for his actions answering only that investment carries risk and there’s no opportunity without crisis. What he discovers is perhaps that you reap what you sow, Chan frequently cutting to hugely entertained netizens baying for his blood while he attempts to outrun his fiery karma. 

In each of the increasingly humorous storylines, Chan’s being a particular highlight of wit and irony, there is a lingering dissatisfaction with the contemporary society from the pressures of the fiercely competitive housing market to the kind of financial desperation and longing for connection that fuels the consumerist emptiness of influencer culture. The jury might be out on whether there’s really any such thing as “ghosts” but the haunting is real enough even if it’s only in your mind. 

Tales from the Occult screens at the Garden Cinema, London on 9th July as part of Focus Hong Kong’s Making Waves – Navigators of Hong Kong Cinema.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Anita (梅艷芳, Longman Leung Lok-man, 2021)

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“I have the spirit of Hong Kong in me, I won’t resign to fate so easily” insists Anita Mui in a television interview following a year-long career break after a slap in a karaoke bar earned by standing up to a drunken gangster sparked a turf war and sent her into a temporary exile in Thailand. Running away wasn’t something Anita Mui was used to, though she had been it seems humbled by the experience and in Longman Leung Lok-man’s perhaps at times overly reverential biopic of the star who passed away of cancer at 40 in 2003, primed to rise stronger than before with greater focus and determination to serve the people of her home nation. 

Leung does indeed paint Anita (Louise Wong) as a daughter of Hong Kong, opening with her childhood as a vaudeville double act with self-sacrificing sister Ann (Fish Lew) in 1969. Jumping forward to 1982, the pair enter a TV talent competition but only Anita makes through to the final and then eventually wins launching herself into superstardom and path to success that later seems to her to have been too easy. Indeed, Leung frequently cuts to montage sequences featuring stock footage of the real Anita Mui receiving a series of awards and eventually moving into a successful film career with her appearance in Stanley Kwan’s Rouge bringing her best friend Leslie Cheung (Terrance Lau Chun-him) with her as she goes. 

If there’s a defining quality beyond her defiance that Leung is keen to capture, it’s Anita’s generosity and kindheartness. In the opening sequence, the 6-year-old Anita goes to great pains to rescue a balloon trapped in a tree for a little boy who then runs off happily forgetting to say thank you. Ann tells her off for going to trouble for someone who couldn’t even be bothered to say thanks but as she said it makes no difference she’d just just have told him it was no bother and the whole thing would be a waste of time. Her path to fame is not one of ruthless, she is keen to pay it forward and to help others where she can. She is obviously pained when her sister is cut from the competition and mindful of her feelings while bonding with life-long friend Leslie Cheung after his performance at a nightclub bombs while hers is a hit thanks in part to her ability to charm her audience in three different languages switching from Cantonese to Mandarin for a contingent of Taiwanese guests and Japanese for a gaggle of businessmen sitting at the back during a rendition of classic unifier Teresa Teng’s Tsugunai. 

Then again, though we see much of Anita Mui’s post-comeback charity work including that to raise money for flood victims in Taiwan, we obviously do not see any of her pro-democracy political activism or role in assisting those fleeing the Mainland after Tiananmen Square. Such controversial aspects of her life may be taboo for the contemporary Hong Kong or indeed Mainland censor, as perhaps are any overt references to Leslie Cheung’s sexuality even if Anita’s other key relationship, her stylist Eddie, is played with a degree of camp by a fatherly Louis Koo. For similar reasons, despite the emphasis on supporting other artists her major protege Denise Ho, who was recently arrested for her support of Hong Kong independence, is also absent. 

Meanwhile, the film is otherwise preoccupied with a more literal kind of maternity in directly contrasting the course of Anita’s life with that of her sister Ann who married and had children but later passed away of the same disease that would claim Anita just a few years later. The film presents her life as one of romantic sacrifice, that she was forced to choose between love and career and never found true romantic fulfilment. The love of her life, according to the film, was Japanese idol Yuki Godo (Ayumu Nakajima) who was more or less ordered to break up with her because the Japanese idol industry is much more controlling of its stars than that of Hong Kong, only his real life counterpart Masahiko Kondo was actually involved in a fair amount of scandal a short time later having become engaged to a Japanese idol who broke into his apartment and attempted to take her own life after he broke up with her and began dating another pop star. Anita is often described as the Hong Kong Momoe Yamaguchi with whom she shares her low and husky voice as well as rebellious energy, though Momoe Yamaguchi in fact retired quite abruptly after marrying her on-screen co-star and devoted herself to becoming the perfect housewife and mother in an echo of the romantic destiny the film implies continually eluded Anita culminating in her decision to marry the stage during her final concert. 

At the end, however, the film returns to her as a daughter of Hong Kong embodying a spirit of rebellion it subversively hints is now in danger of being lost. Yet Anita refused to resign herself to fate, ignoring her doctor’s advice to stop singing after developing polyps in her vocal chords and again when told to stop working during her treatment for cancer. Her defiance and resilience along with the conviction that anything is possible if you want it enough echo the spirit of Hong Kong in 2003 though later wounded by her loss and that of Leslie Cheung who tragically took his own life a few months before Anita too passed away. Featuring a star-making turn from model Louise Wong in her first acting role, Leung’s brassy drama capturing the fervent energy of Hong Kong in its pre-Handover heyday is a fitting tribute to the enduring spirit of its defiant heroine. 

Anita screens at the Soho Hotel, London on 8th July as part of Focus Hong Kong’s Making Waves – Navigators of Hong Kong Cinema.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Teresa Teng’s Tsugunai

Momoe Yamaguchi – 曼珠沙華 (Manjushaka)

Anita Mui – 曼珠沙華

Making Waves – Navigators of Hong Kong Cinema Comes to London 8th to 10th July

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Focus Hong Kong is back this July with Making Waves – Navigators of Hong Kong Cinema, a touring film programme marking the 25th anniversary of the Handover presented in partnership with Create Hong Kong. Opening with the highly anticipated Anita Mui biopic Anita, the festival will close with the legendary actress’ final screen appearance in the landmark 2004 Ann Hui drama, July Rhapsody.

Friday 8 July, 7pm: Opening Gala Anita (Soho Hotel)

Longman Leung’s highly anticipated biopic of iconic Cantopop superstar and revered Hong Kong actress Anita Mui who sadly passed away after battling cervical cancer at the young age 40 in 2003.

Saturday 9 July

12:00: Comrades, Almost a Love Story + Peter Chan holo-presence (Soho Hotel)

Maggie Cheung and Leon Lai star as a pair of star-crossed Mainlanders seeking new futures in Hong Kong. While he, naive and earnest, hopes to make enough money to marry his hometown girlfriend, she, more cynical, seeks security in consumerism but the pair are finally brought together by the music of Teresa Teng.

16:30: The First Girl I Loved (Garden Cinema)

A young woman begins to re-evaluate her teenage romance when her first love asks her to be maid of honour at her wedding in Yeung Chiu-hoi & Candy Ng Wing-shan’s youth nostalgia romance. Review.


19:00: Tales From the Occult (Garden Cinema)

Three-part horror anthology featuring contributions from Fruit Chan, Fung Chih Chiang, and Wesley Hoi Ip Sang exploring the hidden horrors of the contemporary Hong Kong society.

Sunday 10 July

12:30: Hand Rolled Cigarette (Garden Cinema)

Gordon Lam stars as a former British soldier unable to adjust to the post-handover society and trapped in a triad-adjacent existence while bonding with a South Asian migrant on the run from gangsters from whom his cousin stole a large amount of drugs. Review.

15:30 : Breakout Brothers (Garden Cinema)

A cheerful triad who wants to give his mother a kidney transplant, a falsely convicted architect, and a veteran inmate who wants to see his daughter get married decide to break out of prison but discover that it’s friendship that sets them free in Mak Ho-Pong’s cartoonish crime caper. Review.


18:00: Closing Gala July Rhapsody (Garden Cinema)

Landmark 2004 drama from Ann Hui featuring Anita Mui in her final screen role as the wife of a schoolteacher (Jackie Cheung) whose marriage is destabilised when an old lover returns from abroad and her husband is tempted by the attentions of a precocious student.

Making Waves – Navigators of Hong Kong Cinema runs in London 8 to 10 July at Soho Hotel and the Garden Cinema. The programme will also be touring to cities around the world including: Udine, Shanghai, Bali, Bangkok, Singapore, Sydney, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Tokyo, Warsaw, Prague, Dubai, and Hong Kong later in the year with full details to be available via the Making Waves website in due course. Tickets are already on sale via Focus Hong Kong and you can keep up to date with all the latest news via Focus Hong Kong’s official website, Facebook Page, Twitter account, and Instagram channel.