Mama Hung – Windows on Worlds

There’s no such thing as a reasonably priced apartment, and so when you find one that seems strangely spacious for the rent, it’s prudent to wonder why that might be. Yes, that’s right, your dream apartment may in fact be haunted! Going a bit meta, Ronny Yu Yan-Tai gets in on the comedy ghost game with The Occupant (靈氣逼人), a tale of supernatural suspense starring Taiwanese-Canadian actress and singer Sally Yeh as a young woman returning from Canada for a three week stay to work on her dissertation researching “Chinese superstition”.

Having not thought to book ahead for her accommodation, Angie (Sally Yeh Chian-Wen) is shocked to discover that hotel rooms in the Hong Kong of 1984 are in no way cheap. Locked out of even the cheapest flea pits, she decides to try renting an apartment only to run into the slimy Hansome Wong (Raymond Wong Pak-Ming), an unscrupulous estate agent/used car salesman. Angie spots an apartment sitting on his board that’s in her budget and asks to see it. Hansome is delighted because it’s been on the market ages, but what he doesn’t disclose is that the reason it’s so cheap is that the place is haunted. Angie is originally quite confused by the fact her furniture seems to move back to its original position all by itself, and irritated by loud noises such as a woman singing and a couple having an argument late at night, but on being told that she’s the only resident by the decidedly creepy caretaker (Yam Ho), decides she’s not really bothered if the apartment has another occupant besides herself and anyway it might be quite useful for her thesis.

Very much in the Wong Jing vein, much of the early comedy revolves around Hansome’s cringeworthy attempts to worm his way into Angie’s life. Luckily for her, he says, Hansome is a very “superstitious” person and so offers to show her around all the best “superstitious” sights of the city, particularly a local temple where they seem to do every kind of taoist ritual going. The problem is that Angie can’t seem to get rid of him. He even pulls the trick of saying that he left something behind in her apartment so he can come in and retrieve it, only to get his arm trapped in a priceless vase. Hearing about the ghost he vows to stay the night and protect her from the boogeyman, but he didn’t count on the real thing turning up and expelling him from the apartment in exasperation with creepy men everywhere.

Meanwhile, Angie is actually quite taken with a handsome policeman she runs into at the airport, but incorrectly assumes he’s a “sex maniac” because he was only hanging out with her as camouflage for surveilling another woman who turned out to be a pickpocket. Valentino (Chow Yun-Fat) is an honest cop, which is why he ends up getting asked to take some time off after discovering a fellow officer visiting an establishment they were raiding on a tip off that it was employing underage girls. Like Hansome, Valentino has also taken to Angie, if in a slightly less creepy way, and the three of them eventually get together to try and solve the ghost problem (not that Angie actually has much of a problem with it).

On investigation, Angie discovers that the previous occupant of the apartment was a nightclub singer who apparently shot herself after a failed affair with a married man who wouldn’t leave his family. She becomes ever more obsessed with the dead woman, Lisa Law (Kitman Mak Kit-Man), despite the warnings from Valentino’s former policeman turned taoist priest buddy (Lo Lieh) who tells her that the ghost most likely bears a grudge and will try to engineer a reprise of her tragedy using a susceptible subject. Yu has fun parodying some of the genre staples like magical charms supposed to ward off ghosts which get mysteriously lost at critical moments, but edges towards a real supernatural dread as the curse takes hold, swallowing our trio in a bizarre recreation of the past which accidentally reveals a long hidden truth and helps to alleviate the ghost’s anger. In her frequent voice overs recorded on a dictaphone, Angie reveals that she came to Hong Kong with a low view of “Chinese superstition” but thanks to her experiences now has a new appreciation for the power of the supernatural. Ghosts it seems can’t be exorcised so much as appeased, ignore them at your peril.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

TheTeaHouse+1974-248-b Where oh where are the put upon citizens of martial arts movies supposed to grab a quiet cup of tea and some dim sum? Definitely not at Boss Cheng’s teahouse as all hell is about to break loose in there when it becomes the centre of a turf war in gloomy director Kuei Chih-Hung’s social minded modern day kung-fu movie The Teahouse (成記茶樓, Cheng Ji Cha Lou).

Wang Cheng runs a small teahouse which prides itself on being the kind of progressive environment where everyone looks after each other as long as they play by the rules. Unfortunately, one of his young guys – Blackie, fresh off the boat from the mainland, has got himself into bad company and into trouble with the law. However, as he’s a minor, he gets off with barely any punishment at all. Cheng tells him he can stay at the teahouse only if he pays properly for his crime leading him to try and get himself arrested all over again so he can go to jail (which actually proves very difficult).

Another unfortunate side effect of Blackie’s adventure is that it brings some unwanted gangster attention and when two young thugs come looking for one of the waitresses, Boss Cheng is not going to stand for any nonsense. However, after his attempts to help the girl have failed, he finds himself in trouble with two different sets of gangsters and also a meddling police inspector who seems intent on using the teahouse to trap the triads.

Boss Cheng is a good and decent man but also someone with his own opinions on justice who is not afraid to take matters into his own hands. His rules for workers at the teahouse emphasise obeying the law and behaving like responsible citizens, but he’s not above carrying out a little corrective action of his own if the need arises.

The biggest theme of the film is the rising inequality and place of migrants from the mainland in contemporary Hong Kong society but the first target Kuei has his sights set on is out of control youth. Because of the lenient laws regarding child criminality, the young men of Hong Kong run rampant, safe in the knowledge that nothing is going to happen to them while they remain under the age of responsibility. The two gangsters accused of raping and attempting to force the teenage waitress at the teahouse into prostitution give their ages as 14 and 15 respectively to the trial judge and are released without charge to go back to their life of crime with impunity and no respect for the law or conventional morality. Sadly, this system just creates another child criminal but one who will receive a jail sentence even if a lighter one to be served in a reform school rather than a prison.

Blackie was seduced into crime by a lack of funds – having managed to make it over from the mainland he has nothing other than his job at the teahouse and the support of Boss Cheng. One day a ragged looking little boy leading his sister by the hand wanders into the teahouse to beg for food. It turns out his small family escaped from the mainland too but his father never made it to Hong Kong and his mother is ill, leaving the children to try and fend for themselves. Boss Cheng takes pity on them and gives the boy a job plus paying for his school fees but he still finds himself beaten up by thugs not much older than himself in the street.

All the while, corrupt fat cats are messing with the system to keep the poor in their place while the rich get richer. Cheng takes great pleasure in playing off a corrupt industrialist who tried to use him as a sacrificial pawn in his own war against the triads (well, the triads he doesn’t like, anyway). Amusingly, one of the triad bosses seems to think Cheng is also a brother forcing him to pretend to know all about triad rituals to attempt to make a truce with them. The teahouse is situated right between the territories of two rival gangs making it a prime spot for conflict. However, the real problem comes when the police start muscling in, giving off the impression that Cheng has turned traitor on the triads. Soon, Cheng becomes the single biggest threat to his own teahouse and the progressive environment he hoped it would foster.

The Teahouse is actually a little ahead of its time concentrating not on kung fu or street fighting but mixing in a little gun play and some bloody knife crime. The shooting style is impressive throughout with a realistic, gritty atmosphere which aims to put the real streets on screen. The film does, however, have a tendency to fall into an episodic rhythm and suffers from its abrupt and slightly odd, downbeat ending which finishes things on an unsatisfying note. That said, The Teahouse is a stylishly shot and socially engaged action extravaganza that makes up for its minor shortcomings with a degree of chutzpah which looks forward to the classic heroic bloodshed movies of the ‘80s.

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

Unsubtitled trailer (Mandarin):

Tag: Mama Hung

The Occupant (靈氣逼人, Ronny Yu Yan-Tai, 1984)

The Teahouse (成記茶樓, Kuei Chih-Hung, 1974)