Animated Contender: No. 7 Cherry Lane

How could Hong Kong be the site of “anti-colonial” demonstrations in the 1960’s, yet the United Nations refuses to designate it a former colony? Because to do so would entail certain international legal statuses that would be inconvenient for the CCP, so the UN obediently obliges them. This animated feature takes us back to that old pre-Asian Tiger Economies, pre-handover, pre-“National Security” Law Hong Kong. Viewers can revisit SAR when it was very much an assemblage of “local” communities and customs, in Yonfan’s Oscar-contending animated feature No. 7 Cherry Lane, which is currently screening in MoMA’s virtual cinema.

It is an interesting time to live in HK, but as a refugee from Taiwan’s “White Terror,” forty-year-old Mrs. Yu has already seen it all and worse. She and her 18-year-old daughter Meiling, a student and part-time fashion model, settled into a modest but comfortable new life in the North Point “Little Shanghai” neighborhood. However, Meiling was lagging behind in her English studies, so Mrs. Yu hired Ziming, a collegiate English lit scholar, to tutor her.

When he arrives, both mother and daughter find themselves attracted to him, but Ziming asks out Mrs. Yu, the divorcee. Of course, their relationship would be scandalous in 1960s Hong Kong, which is one reason why most of their rendezvouses take place in darkened movie theaters. Ziming also happens to be a fan of Simone Signoret, whose films (like Room at the Top with Laurence Harvey) seem to parallel their own relationship.

The Signoret seen on the movie palace screen becomes a character in her own right, in a very cool way. Shifting from the pastel color palate to an arresting black-and-white, Yonfan portrays her as a literally larger than life diva. Indeed, his use of films like Room and Ship of Fools, as well as novels like Remembrance of Time Past and Dream of the Red Chamber (depicted in a long, surreal, sexually-charged dream sequence) add a lot of depth and texture to the film.

Visually, Cherry Lane is richly distinctive and occasionally very trippy, but it is always grounded in the middle- and working-class neighborhoods of HK. This is the Hong Kong of mom-and-pop shops and corner noodle restaurants. It inspires nostalgia for a bygone era. It is also surprisingly erotic at times and even includes some brief but explicit gay subject matter, so it is hard to see the current Beijing-dominated government embracing this film.

In fact, it shows HK cops racking down hard on protestors. In this case, they were misguided activists inspired by the Cultural Revolution (which the CCP is trying to pretend never happened). Regardless, the Mainland film industry would never produce such an openly sexual film, so enjoy it while you can from Hong Kong.

MFF ’18: Love Education

When it comes to marriage, it isn’t the love or the memories that really matter. It’s the paperwork. Alas, Qui Huiying’s father was not particularly diligent at documenting his two marriages, but those were chaotic times in the Mainland provinces. As a result, Qui and her father’s first wife find themselves in a standoff throughout Sylvia Chang’s Love Education (fortunately also starring Chang herself), which screens during the 2018 Miami Film Festival.

After the death of her mother, Qui decides her parents should be buried together, even though that would mean exhuming him from the grave “Nanna” tends every day. In fact, the soon-to-retire teacher is convinced this was her mother’s dying request, even though her husband Yin Xiaoping and daughter Weiwei totally missed it. Determining legal standing in this case will be a tricky business. Grandpa and Nanna were joined in an arranged marriage, but he left their famine-wracked village a few months later hoping to find opportunity in the big city. There he met Qui’s mother, whom he married according to more modern and legal conventions. However, neither has the right kind of official court marriage license to prove their rightful custodianship of his grave.

Meanwhile, Weiwei was falling for Da, a brooding hipster bar singer, at least until his ex and her young son showed up on his doorstep. Their relationship might sound like it will parallel that of Qui’s parents, but Chang is too sophisticated a filmmaker for such simplistic one-to-one gimmicks. Indeed, it soon becomes clear their halting romance is very much their own.

Granted, Love Education is messy in both smart ways that are true to life and in less fortunate reflections of a somewhat untidy screenplay. However, it is enormously refreshing to see an emotionally mature relationship-driven film that features intelligently drawn, fully dimensional female and male characters. Clearly, Chang has a special knack for this kind of drama, having also helmed the exquisitely delicate Murmur of the Hearts.

Of course, she is also one of our greatest living actresses. Critics love to laud Dame Helen Mirren and Susan Sarandon as more mature actresses who are still glamorous, but that should apply one hundred-fold to Chang (just check out her recent work in Office and Mountains May Depart). This time around, she still somehow manages to sneak up on us, charging ahead as the dutiful-daughter-tiger-mother in the first two acts—and then suddenly lowering the boom on us in key scenes down the stretch.

Likewise, the formerly banned filmmaker Tian Zhuangzhaung gives a lowkey performance as Yin, until he suddenly just pulls the rug out from under us. Lang Yueting nicely portrays Weiwei’s process of maturing and coming into herself, while Geng Le adds some intriguing flair as the actor-parent of one of Qui’s problem students.

Love Education is an intimate film that makes you fee like you are practically a member of Qui’s family. Yet, buried within, there is some thinly veiled critiques of China’s longstanding record of polygamous practices in rural areas, as well as the chaotic mid-20^th Century ideological movements that left so many government records offices in a state of utter shambles. First and foremost, there is really terrific work from Sylvia Chang on both sides of the camera. Highly recommended for readers authors like Gail Tsukiyama and Lisa See, as well as Chang’s many fans, Love Education screens tomorrow (3/18), as part of this year’s Miami Film Festival.

To Save and Project ’16: Legend of the Mountain

It was the biggest drum battle since Chick Webb faced off against Gene Krupa and the rest of the Goodman orchestra. When a demon and a Buddhist lama join engage in combat, their weapon of choice is the hand drum. The resulting percussion further disorients her profoundly confused newlywed scholar husband in King Hu’s freshly restored classic 1979 supernatural epic, Legend of the Mountain (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 edition of MoMA’s To Save and Project.

Ho Qingyun is an underachieving scholar who agrees to painstakingly copy a Buddhist sutra solely for the money. He did not believe in anything otherworldly before he accepted this gig, but that will soon change. While in transit from monastery to monastery he stops in a sparsely populated village that effectively became a demilitarized zone after an unfortunate uprising and an armistice that was even more embarrassing for the Imperial government.

Advisor Tsui is still on duty, but he is probably not a good influence on Ho. After a heavy night of drinking, the scholar wakes to find he has promised to marry Melody, whose drumming combined with the booze really did a number on poor Ho. However, since she is played Hsu Feng, the scholar is prepared to make good on his commitments. She also happens to be a demon, but he does not know that yet.

Shortly thereafter, Advisor Tsui takes Ho out for drinks at the local inn, where he meets the proprietor’s daughter, Cloud. She too makes a strong impression, but she also has her own supernatural secrets. Everyone does in the mountain village (practically and perhaps literally a ghost town), but nobody is telling Ho anything. Even the Buddhist lama who will challenge Melody’s powers of hypnotic percussion and his ally, the Taoist priest keep Ho in the dark.

Although Legend is a story of ghosts and demons (inspired by Pu Songling’s Stories from a Chinese Studio) rather than a rousing wuxia epic, all the King Hu hallmarks are present and accounted for. The restoration looks phenomenal, which allows viewers to soak in his stunning mountain vistas and dramatic wide-angle god’s eye perspectives. This is a big picture in every way, including the three-hour running time. Yet, Hu turns around a stages intimate scenes of comic farce worthy of Blake Edwards.

As usual, Hu repertory player Shih Chun is pitch-perfect, making Ho a guileless comic foil, but not a shticky caricature. Hsu Feng commands the screen as Melody, playing the demonic femme fatale to the hilt. It is also remarkable to watch the young and arresting Sylvia Chang making her mark as Cloud, especially knowing how she would shatter glass ceilings in the HK film industry as a director and screenwriter (for both her own vehicles and often for films reflecting male perspectives). This is a significant early role in an altogether remarkable career.

It seems self-evident in the post-Crouching Tiger era, but Hu was one of the first filmmakers who made snobby cineastes understand a film could be high art and also kick a lot of butt. You could think of Legend as the Chinese ghost story Washington Irving never wrote (it even starts with Ho dozing off in a mountain gazebo). Highly recommended for fans of HK/Taiwanese historical epics of any genre, Hu’s restored director’s cut of Legend of the Mountain screens again this Wednesday (11/9), as part of MoMA’s annual To Save and Project film restoration series.

HK Cinema at SFFS ‘16: Murmur of the Hearts

If Stephen Chow made you want to stop believing in mermaids, Sylvia Chang might give you reason to reconsider. A mermaid always figured prominently in the bedtime stories Yu-mei and Yu-nan’s mother told them. Actually, it was the same ever-evolving story. Divided by circumstances, the grown siblings will struggle with their difficult legacy in Chang’s Murmur of the Hearts (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Hong Kong Cinema at the San Francisco Film Society.

Note the plural of the hearts to distinguish Chang’s latest directorial effort from Louis Malle’s 1971 film. The settings in Taipei and Taiwan’s Green Island (Lyudao) are also quite distinctive. It was once primarily known as a penal colony, but the latter has starting doing a brisk tourist business in recent years. Yu-nan currently works there as a tour guide, because he stayed with their stern father, while Yu-mei is now a promising artist in the capitol, because she left with their more supportive mother. Inevitably, their separation led to resentments against the parent and sibling each felt rejected by.

Arguably, Yu-mei’s boyfriend Hsiang fits right in. He is a terrible boxer, but he keeps plugging away, driven by his own parental issues. However, a series of crises—Yu-mei’s pregnancy, the loss of Hsiang’s license, the declining health of the father Yu-nan still cares for, and a massive monsoon might provide a catalyst for healing.

Disappointingly, the eternally amazing Chang always stays behind the camera, but that largely leaves the spotlight to Macanese superstar Isabella Leong (last seen with Jet Li in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor), who clearly hasn’t lost a step in seven years. She is just quietly and profoundly devastating as Yu-mei. Lawrence Ko is also rigorously understated as Yu-nan, managing to hold his own quite well. He also forges some exquisitely delicate chemistry with Angelica Lee Sin-je, playing their mother in the film’s several fantastical reveries.

At times, Chang pushes the dreamy New Age vibe a bit too far, but she distills so much raw emotion and truth into key sequences they will really knock viewers for a loop. She is clearly a thesp’s director, coaxing the charismatic but sometimes not so expressive Joseph Chang to one of his best performances as Hsiang. She and co-screenwriter Yukihiko Kageyama give him his moment, which he delivers on.

Keep in mind, Murmur starts slow, but it pays off massively, so it is well worth sticking with it. The three stars really disappear into the characters, all of whom the audience will come to care about, as if they were long lost family. Very highly recommended, Murmur of the Hearts screens this Sunday (9/25) as part of the SFFS’s annual Hong Kong Cinema series.

NYFF ’15: Mountains May Depart

Evidently, in Chinese discos around 1999, “Go West” was like “The Final Countdown” in Czech dance clubs. When they played it, everybody hit the dancefloor. However, when you heard the Pet Shop Boys’ cover, you knew it was 12:00 sharp, the start of a new day. It heralds the dawn of a new era, but not necessarily a better one in Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart (clip here), which screens as a Main Slate selection of the 53^rd New York Film Festival.

Shen Tao and her friends are going to party like it is 1999, because it is. New Year is approaching, when she will once again sing Fenyang’s big celebratory song. Obviously, the school teacher is the village sweetheart, but the well-heeled wheeler-dealer Zhang Jinsheng and her dirt poor childhood chum Liangzi are particularly smitten. A traditional love triangle forms, but Shen is (perhaps willfully) unaware how dirty Zhang is willing to fight.

By most objective measures, she makes the wrong choice and deals with the consequences in the second act set during 2014. Divorced from Zhang, Shen lives a comfortable life as Fenyang’s leading patroness, but it is a lonely existence without her seven year old son Dollar, as his father insisted on naming him, which pretty much tells you what you need to know about Zhang. However, she gets a poignant reminder of what might have been when the long absent Liangzi returns to Fenyang with his family and a nasty case of black lung.

The 2014 arc concludes with Shen attempting to make some sort of peace with Dollar before he immigrates to Australia with Zhang and his trophy wife. Flashing forward to 2025, the eighteen year-old can hardly remember his mother. Zhang’s dodgy dealings have caught up with them, causing no end of embarrassment for the son. For obvious Freudian reasons, Dollar explores an ambiguously romantic relationship with his professor Mia, a Hong Kong immigrant (by way of Toronto) who happens to be about Shen’s age.

Both the 1999 and 2014 sections include documentary footage Jia shot before knowing they would have a place in Mountains, but not the 2025 segment, at least not as far as we know. Frankly, the opening scene of Jia’s muse and now wife Zhao Tao leading a “Go West” get-down is so infectious, it demanded a film be crafted around. Yet, following its sheer retro joy, the rest of the film down-shifts, maintaining an exquisitely bittersweet vibe.

To match his vintage footage, all of the 1999 scenes are in boxy Academy ratio (as per the state of digital cameras at the time) and feature vivid saturated colors (especially the crimson reds of Shen’s wardrobe). In accordance with technological advances and increased pollution, Jia cranks up the 2014 scenes to standard ratio and dilutes the colors, while the 2025 Australian sequences are shot in sterile looking widescreen. You can also notice the population density of the streets and the screen precipitously decline.

It is all rather fitting and clever as a commentary on the impact of technology on human relationships, but what really sticks with you is Jia’s characteristic use of pop songs, which has never been as poignant. In addition to The Pet Shop Boys, HK Cantopop superstar Sally Yeh’s love songs rouse all kinds of sentimental and nostalgic feelings, in the way only effective pop tunes can.

Zhao Tao is absolutely perfect for Shen Tao. She truly looks ageless and timeless, yet she can eerily convey so much through so such subtle expression. Probably nobody working in film today can hold an audience rapt with a silent close-up as long as she can. Your heart aches for her, but you have to respect Shen for accepting responsibility for her mistakes and carrying on with dignity.

Zhao brings more than enough presence for any film, but Mountains also has the revered Sylvia Chang, hot on the heels of Office after a five year absence from film. Few people have her combination of maturity and sensuality that is so aptly suited for Mia. Think of her as a potential HK Helen Mirren, in a few years’ time. There are no end of pitfalls to depicting May-Septemberish relationships, but she develops convincingly imperfect chemistry with Dong Zijian’s Dollar that makes it work in dramatic terms.

The more you think about Mountains, the more it gets into your head and your soul. It is the sort of film that might break you out in tears later in the night rather than while you are in the theater, which is rather considerate of it, really. It is also further proof that Zhao Tao is the finest screen actress of our generation, bar none. Very highly recommended, Mountains May Depart screens again tonight (9/29) at the Beale Theater, as part of this year’s NYFF.

Johnnie To’s Office

It is the corporate headquarters of Jones & Sunn, a large Mainland financial services conglomerate, but it looks like it exists in the world of Chaplin’s Modern Times. Never has the white collar workplace been so surreal, yet so uncomfortably credible in a Bloomberg bullpen kind of way. The impending IPO represents a heck of a payday for everyone, if by everyone you mean the charismatic chairman and his not so secret lover, the CEO, but Lehman Brothers complicates everything in Johnnie To’s musical adaptation of Sylvia Chang’s zeitgeisty play, Office (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York, after premiering at this year’s TIFF.

Yes, Johnnie To has made a movie musical—and why not? It is one more cinematic peak he summited. The music is not bad, but the design is simply extraordinary. Note there is no article before this Office. It is a strictly serious, high stakes environment. Ambitious junior managers like Sophie understand they have to move up or out, but there is not a lot of room above her. She has the ambiguous “support” of VP David Wang, who in turn is the “favorite” of CEO Winnie Chang. She is a somewhat scandalous figure for openly carrying on with the chairman, Ho Chung-ping while his wife remains in a persistent coma.

Into this thorny nest of office politics come two fresh-faced management trainees. Li Xiang is a guileless go-getter, who somewhat charms Chang in spite of herself. Yet, the mysterious Kat probably has the inside track being the chairman’s daughter, working under an assumed name to avoid improper appearances. Frankly though, nepotism will be the least of everyone’s worries.

At the risk of excessive repetition, it should be emphasized just how incredible designer William Chang’s sets look. They brilliantly blend the austerity of postmodernism with the expressionism of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Sylvia’s Chang’s narrative is unusually complex, but it is nice to see a film refrain from dumbing down the content. Of course, some themes are universal, like the corporate equivalent of the aging diva and naïve ingénue struggling to hold onto their piece of the pie. However, her source play resonated with Chinese audiences newly coming to terms with the salaryman blues in ways that will feel familiar to American viewers. Welcome to the party, its spectacular, isn’t it?

In all honesty, the tunes are just okay, but Eason Chan demonstrates major vocal chops as David Wang. On the other hand, Tang Wei looks like she just wants to get through her numbers as quickly as possible, but in all other respects, her work as Sophie is sensitively rendered and deeply affecting. Still, Sylvia Chang clearly saved the prime cuts for herself, digging into Winnie Chang’s Joan Crawfordness with relish we can all share. She also develops some charmingly undefinable chemistry with Wang Ziyi’s Li Xiang. It is also cool to watch Chow Yun-fat strut his stuff as the chairman of the board, because that is basically what he is to Hong Kong cinema.

When Johnnie To does a musical, you have to see it. It sounds fine, but Tang, Sylvia Chang, and William Chang’s eye-popping corporate HQ give the audience plenty to watch. Recommended for To faithful ready for his next departure and fans of the all-star cast, Office opens this Friday (9/18) in New York, at the AMC Empire.