Male Impotency

Hollywood Hong Kong, Fruit Chan's latest work, can be seen as a reflection of the Post 97 Hong Kong, where the men have lost their bearings and become "impotent"; women, on the other hand, are resilient and thus able to seize the days. Henceforward, women are now the ones who rule.

When it was shown, Tai Hum Village, the location that symbolizes Hong Kong, was already demolished and leveled. What remains standing is the Hollywood Plaza on the other side of the road, and what the film refers to as the Buddha's Mount of Five Fingers (exclusive housing project Galaxia Tower).

A no longer existing shantytown here is sculpted into a labyrinthine world of rich details, a mirror amusement park with no way out. The village is a mixture of reality and fantasy, and the people there are caught in the ensnaring spider web where the meaning of living is just passing the time, and to be tossed out, and disappear into history, at the end.

Like Durian Durian, the first part of Fruit Chan's Prostitute Trilogy, this film is adept in the manipulation of dramatic and visual contrast to enhance the story with depth, toleration and perspectives. The film features a pig like obese family, a thin-as-monkey gangster and two distinctive prostitutes - one a Hong Kong native who used to attach herself to a never-do-well gangster, the other a Shanghai beauty who, in her wandering, cheats men along the way. They are, like the women in Durian Durian, each labours in her won way. Dangerous and sexy as sirens in The Journey to the West, they are the embodiment of Fruit Chan's persistent personal theme, that woman and venture represent the way out; man and staying put the dead end.

The most inspired scene is the lady in red who swings in everyone's dream. Each swing is a dance of contrasting extremes: heaven and hell, reality and illusion, rich and poor, male and female, hither and thither. We are all turned on by such a seductive dance.

Comrades: Almost a Love Story in the Twilight Zone As for Three

According Peter Chan, the mastermind, producer and one of the Three directors, the original concept was to combine the cinematic prowess of Korea, Thailand and Hong Kong as a new marketing strategy for the Asian market. The directors were given a free rein in the ghost story they shot. It was just coincidental that they all involve regional changes, couple estrangement or separation, and that despite the spooky story the main focus is still on humanity.

Overall speaking, it is the Going Home segment directed by Peter Chan that captures the eye. The plotline is about a policeman (played by Eric Tsang) who, when looking for his disappeared son (gone out to have fun with a girl ghost), stumbles on his herbalist neighbour's (played by Leon Lai) secret: for three years, he has been bathing his dead wife with herbal concoction, believing it the way to revive her. The locale was a soon to be demolished building which was eerily shot (by Chris Doyle) in cold gray and deep green. As Lai plays a mainland immigrant and Chan renders life and death as a physical separation, it is easy to see Three as Comrades: Almost a Love Story in the twilight zone.

Locally, Leon Lai's chilly acting has won major approval. However, as his antagonist is Eric Tsang, his performance is somewhat outshone by comparison. Tsang is tied up most of the time, yet he manages to convey the character's background simply through his facial expression and sparse lines.

By Keeto Lam

(Translated by Teri Chan)