Fong
Lan is a schoolteacher and Blackie Lau is an outlaw, but they work well
together on missions for the Dongjiang resistance to Imperial Japanese
occupation. However, those are only short-term assignments. Over the long-term,
Fong will endure the occupation and the stress of her clandestine work thanks
to the support of her caustic mother. Ann Hui takes viewers behind enemy lines,
but she is even more interested in life on the home front. She is admittedly
not one to wave the bloody shirt, which is why some speculate her film was
precipitously replaced as the opening night film of this Shanghai International
Film Festival. Regardless, Ann’s Our Time
Will Come released in Chinese-language markets just in time for the
official Handover anniversary celebrations and opens this Friday in New York,
soon after our own Independence Day (trailer here).
Poet
and future PRC Minister of Culture is renting a room from Fong’s mother (she
will be called Mrs. Fong, period), but they can sense he is primed to bolt. Fong
herself will help facilitate his flight as part of an underground Varian Fry-like
operation to smuggle intellectuals out of occupied Hong Kong. Her grace under
pressure is definitely noticed by Lau. He is still relatively new to the
resistance, but not to living a shadowy underground existence. Soon, Lau returns
to recruit her to lead their urban division. There will definitely be sparks
passing between them, but they will not have time for that until after victory.
Both
Fong and Lau will become very, very good at what they do. Mrs. Fong is troubled
by the risks her daughter takes, but she starts to worm her way into low level
resistance activities, to maintain a connection with her. Meanwhile, Fong’s ex,
Gam-wing accepts a white-collar office position with the Imperial government.
However, he is not a collaborator. Instead, he is an independent mole, looking
for an opportunity to do some serious damage on his own initiative.
Frankly,
the time has come for an Ann Hui career retrospective, considering how
consistent and prolific her work has been, especially as she approaches 70. Arguably,
the long, almost self-contained Mao Dun sub-plot gives the film a somewhat
episodic feel, but it is still a rich cinematic feast. Zhou Xun and Eddie Peng
have terrific chemistry together as colleagues-not-lovers, Fong and Lau. Zhou
is still one of the most expressive actresses on the planet, while Peng has
developed some tremendous action chops that Hui periodically allows him to
show-off. Honestly, Peng has become the movie-star Tom Cruise mistakenly thinks
he still is.
Wallace
Huo (who has back-to-back New York releases, following Reset) is also terrifically suave and intriguing as Gam-wing—a heroically
roguish performance in the tradition of George Sanders in B-movies like Appointment in Berlin. However, Deannie
Ip truly takes command of the film in the third act as the unlikely and
tragically valiant Mrs. Fong.