Bookends of HK's Golden Age

Chinese Ghost Story

viewed June 24 , 2000 on VHS     Full Details

Comrades: Almost a Love Story

viewed June 18, 2000 on VCD   Full Details

The period between 1985 to 1995 can be considered to be the true Golden Age of Hong Kong Cinema.  In a period of true brilliance, Hong Kong films dazzled the world stage with what I would easily categorize as the most vibrant filmmaking of its time.  Hyperactive editing, unexpected camera angles and sweeping movements, and exquisitely choreographed action sequences typified the Hong Kong aesthetic, whose influence can now be seen (somewhat bastardized, as expected) in almost every Hollywood action film.  

Today, quite a few stars and filmmakers who built their reputation on this style, John Woo, Chow Yun-Fat and Tsui Hark for example, are producing Hollywood fodder that barely hints to the talent they flashed in their homeland.  Their migration was caused partly by the lure of easy money in the States once Hollywood finally appreciated the entertainment value of HK action, but mostly because of the anxieties caused by the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to Mainland China.  Looking back, one wonders if the decade-long period of productivity and artistry was due to the sound of the clock ticking for Hong Kong's future.  Somehow HK cinema hasn't been the same since that fateful year.  Perhaps a new, more solemn age of filmmaking under the specter of stricter government control is underway -- but as we anticipate what is to come, the Golden Age can be reflected on through two films I saw this weekend, each made at opposite ends of this blessed period.

Chinese Ghost Story is the film that infused the Hong Kong action aesthetic with a force nothing less than supernatural.  Combining frenetic, freaky action with a healthy dose of campy horror, this film is like an ancient Chinese version of Blue Velvet.  An extremely geeky tax collector (the effeminate Leslie Cheung) is forced to spend a night at a haunted temple where a fatally beautiful phantom (Joey Wong) tries to seduce him to his death.  Whenever a man consummates his passions with the phantom, a terrifying tree demon sucks out his life blood. 

Fortunately, the tax collector so timidly flaccid that he can’t even score a sure thing.  The phantom takes this for chivalry, falls in love with him and begs him to rescue her from the tree demon.  Several battles ensue between men and demons, including an unbelievable skirmish where Cheung and his ally, a kung-fu monk, fend off the tree demon's 50 foot long tongue.  

This film is the quintessential Hong Kong movie-as-entertainment: it has kung-fu action, romance, comedy, frights, and  even a hit song, At about the midway point this film reaches fever pitch and never lets up, until we’re immersed in an unbelievable climax set in the dark depths of hell.  Those who seek an introduction to Hong Kong cinema, the most entertaining cinema of the past 30 years, should get their hands on this film.

The brilliantly titled: Comrades: Almost a Love Story was a box-office smash in Hong Kong and nearly swept the 1996 Hong Kong Film Awards.  The fervor around the film may have been due to the combustion of the film's material with the moment in time in which it was released.  The story of two mainlanders who struggle to thrive as immigrants in HK may have reminded the majority of Hong Kong people that they were mainlanders at one point or another.  It was like a Cantonese Forrest Gump, capturing the nostalgic sentiments of an age as it was passing by. In doing so it worked as a pleasant panacea in preparing for the handover to China. 

In many ways its elements are a textbook example of a non-action-based Chinese entertainment.  The new immigrants have a meet cute in a McDonalds, which becomes a gauge of economic status and cultural literacy to measure the young lovers' process of assimilation.  Though one of them has a wife, they have an illicit affair that seems completely reasonable given the circumstances, providing fun, erotic escapism without compromising either character's morals.  Why not roll around when the rest of your life is full of such hardship?  But all salad days must pass, and eventually the blindly ambitious material girl drops her happy-go lucky counterpart, only to get her come-uppance (apparently for daring to be successful and female).  The tides of fate pull them alternately near and far, all to the bittersweet pop soundtrack of fallen song goddess Theresa Teng.  The penultimate scene, when the two lovers finally run into each other for the last time, is otherworldly, and gives the soap opera a payoff that is priceless.  It's the execution above all else, especially the looks on each of their faces: the two seem to be looking at each other from separate planets.  It's truly a sublime moment.

As the bittersweet couple, Leon Lai and Maggie Cheung are undeniably charming and cute.  Pop singer Lai has the naïve Mainlander bit down pat, with his open face, none-too-sophisticated manner and winning determination.  For this film Cheung won a record third Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actress.  She has an intriguing face ­  It's such an unlikely and arresting beauty that men don’t know what to do with -- a face whose beauty lies solely in the energy radiating from its cricket-like eyes, immense cheekbones, the tight, smirky smile, the abruptly small nose.  Her beauty is more of the plucky kid sister than the come-hither seductress; it inspires platonic instincts while harboring secret crushes, somewhat like feelings towards Geena Davis before she hardened herself.  Anyway, Cheung's go-for-broke energy is perfect for the role.

The sweet nostalgic feelings spread by Comrades: Almost a Love Story played themselves out well into the handover -- but the economic crisis that immediately followed probably snuffed out those sentiments.  It's been a struggle ever since, as Hong Kong citizens have taken the economic improvements they cultivated much less for granted, especially under the specter of their Mainland overseers.  Apparently a new post-Wong Kar Wai style is bubbling up a la films such as Johnny To's The Mission, whose pacing and narrative is even more manic and fragmented.  Perhaps this may reflect the continuing apprehensions of HK citizens as they try to sustain a state of economic and social well-being under the shadowy supervision of the Communist regime.

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