MADE IN HONG KONG [OFFICIAL TRAILER]

Made in Hong Kong 4K Restoration is a Gutter Punk Goodness

Made in Hong Kong (1997) - Fruit Chan

Fruit Chan's Made in Hong Kong came out right after Hong Kong Handover to Mainland China in 1997. With its youthful energy and boisterous amateur cast, the film reflects rather an anxious and pessimistic view of what lays ahead for the new generation facing uncertainty.

It's a kinetic, viseral, shoe-string budget film about a wayward high school drop out/triad wannabe Moon (Sam Lee in a star making role) working as a low level debt collector. Moon spends most of his days jerking off, going through his mom's purse, hanging out with his buddy Sylvester (Wenders Li), a big simpleton who gets bullied around by high school students. Moon terrorizes people who owe Big Brother Cheung money for living.

On one of these runs for collecting money, he meets Ping (Neiky Hui-Chi Yim), a naif with a pixie haircut and falls in love. They soon become an inseparable trio, roaming the busy streets of Hong Kong, having fun. But their carefree lives turn sour after witnessing a suicide of a high school girl named Susan in the neighborhood. Being in possession of the dead girl's suicide note haunt Moon, all throughout, as he procrastinates to do the right thing and return it to her parents.

Moon finds out Ping is dying of a kidney failure and Sylvester is always in need of his protection from the bullies. Then there is a turf war in the neighborhood involving his rival Fat Chan that he has to reckon with.

Made in Hong Kong does not only serve as an anxiety ridden, wayward youth film but also work as a time capsule. Fruit Chan has captured some extraordinary details of the places in Hong Kong in late 90s on celluloid: overcrowded subsidized housing projects, bustling city markets, decrepit corridors and alleys, long stair cases, signs and architecturally uneven skyline of the forever changing city. If Chris Doyle lensed Hong Kong in Wong Kar-Wai movies are hyper romanticized version of the city, Made in Hong Kong, shot by O Sing-pui (who went on to shoot Ip-Man), presents an energetic, ghetto punk version of the same city through a glass darkly.

There are some spectacular scenes that stands out in the film: a steep mountain top cemetery of Chai Wan as the trio runs around looking for the Susan's grave. The kinetic hit sequence where Moon fails to kill the businessmen, alternating between attempt and fantasy, Moon being attacked by a skateboarding hitman with a screwdriver sent by Fat Chan. Made in Hong Kong is filled with nervous energy all the way through its pessimistic, melancholic end.

In 2017, on the 20th anniversary of its release, Made in Hong Kong was restored by the Udine Far East Film Festival (Italy), starting from the original camera negatives and working under the direct supervision of Fruit Chan and cinematographer O Sing-pui. The restoration is as authentic and true to the original film as possible. The film is gorgeous to look at. Pristine images preserve Hong Kong in its uncertain times and jittery atmosphere perfectly, like in a time capsule. See it on the big screen. You won't be disappointed. The film opens Friday 3/6 at Metrograph

Rendezvous with French Cinema 2020

An Easy Girl/Une fille facile - Rebecca Zlotowski

Set in sun-kissed Cannes in summer, An Easy Girl is an astutely observed coming of age story in the material world we are living in. Writer/director Rebecca Zlotowski expertly balances the film from slipping into a typical 'rich older man meets young girl for sexual favors' tale. The film examines the youth in the age of social media and unfettered consumerism and tells that there is more to what meets the eye.

It's the start of a summer break and Naima (Mina Farid) has just turned 16. Still aimless and unsure of her self, she looks up to her newly arrived cousin from Paris, Sophia (Zahia Dehar, a French tabloid sensation cum model/designer). Sophia knows how to command her beauty and use it on men to support her extravagant tastes. She tells her young cousin it's not love but sensations she is after. Sophia catches the eyes of Andres (Nino Lopez), an extremely wealthy art collector who's yacht is docked in the harbor. The girls are then invited on board for soirée under the watchful eye of Philippe (Benoit Magimel), his assistant.

Even though Naima is clearly uncomfortable with her glitzy, guilded surroundings, a glimpse and a taste into the rich and famous is too tempting. But she knows that being free is not just having a lot of money. And it's quiet, withdrawn Philippe who she feels a sort of kinship with.

Discovering and finding value in oneself is what she learns in the course of the hot summer of fun. Farid is pitch perfect for the role of a girl who is still searching for herself and her place in the universe with natural, subtle acting and Dehar is also very effective playing hedonistic, detached young woman who floats through life. 

Burning Ghost/Vif-argent - Batut

Burning Ghost is a paranormal love story that falls between Ghost/Sixth Sense and Afterlife. Juste (Thimotée Robart) is a young man who serves as a gentle guide for recently departed souls to the afterlife, under the order of bureaucratic grim reaper Kramarz (Saadia Bentaïeb). He is invisible to everyone except his colleagues and freshly departed. His idling purgatory is disrupted when Agathe (Mikael Hers regular, Judith Chemla) recognizes him and obviously can see him on the street and follows him. Ten years ago, they met in Turkey and Agathe never forgot about her first love. Now she finds him not aged at all. They fall in love all over again. But because of the laws of the afterlife that mortals are not privy of, Juste becomes invisible to Agathe, and only can appear in her dream.

Closely teetering on sentimental saccharine fest saved by Céline Bozon's elegant, lyrical cinematography and charming leads, Burning Ghost is a beautiful contemplation of memories, love and death.

On a Magical Night/Chambre 212 - Honoré

Maria (Chiara Mastroianni) is a law professor who sleeps around with her younger pupils, even though Richard (Benjamin Biolay, a French singer/music producer who is a Benicio Del Toro doppelgänger), her husband of 25 years, is a good man. She just woke up in bed with one of her student named Asdrubal Electorat, just because his name aroused her. Richard finds out the affair by seeing her busy chat app on the phone. Avoiding the confrontation, Maria goes over to a hotel next street to stay the night.

There she is visited by several people from her past, including young Richard (Vincent Lacoste), his first love/piano teacher Irene(Camille Cottin), her Charles Aznavour-like own will (Stéphane Roger) and dozen of her former lovers over the years.

In true Honoré fashion, On a Magical Night is a musical fantasy steeped in whimsical comedies of old Hollywood and his love for cinema: the setting is snowy winter Paris, Maria and Richard live above a movie theater, piano singalong serves as reconnecting with one's past, obvious studio set mise-en-scene, etc.

Honoré's contemplation of memories, love and marriage are delightfully captured by great ensemble cast with his usual muses - Mastroianni and Lacoste). It's a great fun film to get away from the wretched reality.

Joan of Arc - Dumont

On an intellectual level, I understand what Dumont, the famed auteur of French cinema, heir to the Bressonian minimalist tradition, is doing with Joan of Arc franchise (if you will), but that doesn't necessarily make it an enjoyable movie going experience. After Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc; a headbanger's ball that was part musical, part comedy of manners, part historical retelling of a young French maid who believed that she was god's messenger to take up arms and lead the French army to rid of English invasion, Dumont continues to tell the other half of the story, faithfully following Charles Péguy's rhythmic prose from three part poem/play, which tells Joan's defeat and trial and burning at the stake.

With minimal settings and mostly non-professional actors, Dumont examines Joan (played by Lise Leplat Prudhomme, a ten year old girl who played the character in the first film and not Jeanne Voisin who replaced her as a teen Joan in the same film - I mean, why bother with logic?), as she struggles to answer her accusers of heresy. She doesn't hear the voice that was guiding her to the battle anymore. Does she still keep her faith or admit that god might have abandoned her?

The tragic beauty of the story of Joan has always been her inner struggle and her unwavering faith in the face of torture and death. Even though Prudhomme does an amiable job and Dumont makes a point of using a child instead of a grown woman (Joan was 19 when she died), as innocent victim of sexism and hypocracy of the church. But it doesn't make a compelling experience to watch as clergies dryly argue over Joan's fate while the child screams on top of her lungs, "It is none of your concern!" over and over.

Someone Somewhere/Deux Moi - Klapisch

A romantic comedy in the tradition of "there is a perfect match right next door unbeknownst you". Melanie (Ana Girardot) is a medical lab technician who sleeps too much and has a low self-esteem after a long relationship ended. Rémy (François Civil) is an web sales warehouse worker who thinks he is a bad luck around him. They happen to live adjacent buildings on the same level and have never met in real life.

Kalpisch, as usual, paints Paris as a city with clusters of lonely souls trying to connect with each other, sometimes successfully and other times not. With most stretches of film's running time, he makes the case that these two attractive Parisians are made for each other, but only after they work out their kinks, with the help of a pair of psychotherapists.

Someone Somewhere feels a bit like self-help - "you are allowed to love yourself" movie, but the characters are very affable and relatable. Girardot and Civil are very good so as large supporting characters (notably Camille Cottin and François Berléand as psychotherapists, Pierre Niney as old friend reconnected through social network, and Paul Hamy as a failed tinder date).