This
unnamed teenager is a lot like Japanese singer-songwriter Yui’s character in Taiyou no Uta (Midnight Sun) and whoever
in the lame American remake. She too is allergic to the sun’s ultraviolet rays—or
so she has always been told. However, she is not a singer, but perhaps her
mother was—and maybe still is—or not. She is an outsider in Pearl Village, Hong
Kong’s last surviving fishing hamlet, but in some ways that helps her
appreciate what it represents in Jenny Suen & (co-director) Christopher
Doyle’s The White Girl (trailer here), which screens
during the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival.
All
her life, the “White Girl” has hid beneath floppy hats, sunglasses, and
protective clothing, because her controlling fisherman father assured her she
must. Given her resulting pale skin and shy manner, the villagers dubbed her “White
Girl” or even “Ghost” and have become convinced she can contaminate their nets with
bad mojo with a hard stare. Her only friend is Ho Zai, a scampish little boy
living with an eccentric Buddhist monk, at least until Sakamoto, an emotionally
damaged Japanese expat fleeing his troubles, starts squatting in the decrepit
colonial mansion overlooking the bay.
For
the most part, the White Girl and Sakamoto are drawn to each other, because
they sense the shared empathy and comradery of a fellow wounded spirit.
However, there is also an element of creepy sexual attraction that Sakamoto
scrupulously represses. Yet, she will still lose much of her innocence for
other reasons, as she comes to doubt the validity of everything her father ever
told her. Meanwhile, the resourceful Ho Zai uncovers evidence of the mayor’s
plan to sell out the village to a consortium of Mainland investors.
White Girl is a more focused
and conventional film than Doyle’s Hong Kong Trilogy, which Suen produced, but it is still much more concerned with
mood and vibe than crass plot points. Without doubt, we can see its aesthetic
kinship with some of the classic Wong Kar-wai films he shot. It is a quiet,
lulling film, but fortunately Angela Yuen and Joe Odagiri can emote though the
humid languor as the girl and the squatter. Jeff Yiu is also unusually charismatic
for a young thesp as Ho Zai, while Rayna Lee adds some unlikely sympathetic
glamor as the village school teacher, Miss Wong. However, Leung Kin-ping
probably scores the most points for dramatics with his poignant turn as the
girl’s clueless father.
Honestly,
nobody would have accused Suen & Doyle of selling out if they had cranked
up the narrative a little. Clearly, they believe meandering is part of the
journey. Of course, the symbolism of the hyper-connected Mainland developers
out to obliterate Pearl Village’s way of life is tough to miss, but that doesn’t
mean the message isn’t still needed. Regardless, the mostly attractive and
uniformly expressive ensemble redeems the stylistic excesses. Recommended as an
evocative and elegiac coming of age film, The
White Girl screens again this Monday (4/16), as part of this year’s SFFILM.