Still Too Soon
In the first of two covid movies this week, strangers break all the rules, make friends, renew life. piss off.
A Man and A Woman
Director: Guan Hu • Writers: He Liang-yu, Wang Yujing
Starring: Huang Bo, Ni Ni, Henick Chou
China • 1hr 56mins
Opens Hong Kong May 16 • IIB
Grade: C-
Back in the day, 1966 to be exact, Claude Lelouch made a romantic drama about the demands of the outside world pressing down on a couple that was just starting to explore an intimate connection. Both widowed, the central duo of A Man and a Woman were set up as avatars for all of us, our common fears and frustrations, and the universal persistence of memory that prevents forward momentum in one’s life. There were two sequels exploring how things went for Man and Woman (though Lelouch gave them names). In 2016 Lee Yoon-ki’s A Man and a Woman explored the dynamic between two marrieds in the wake of a sexual tryst in Finland (!), an escape from grim home lives. It’s Korean, so there’s much, much more melodrama in this one. There are songs with this title, albums and books. Point is director Guan Hu is tapping into the same basic idea of the beauty locked within the mystery of anonymous connection or some bullshit in his two-years-on-the-shelf COVID drama A Man and A Woman | 一個男人和一個女人.
“Technical issues” once again beset a completed film that debuted at Shanghai International Film Festival in 2024, then screened at New York Asian last year before vanishing into the ether. Perhaps the issues were writers He Liang-yu (according to some sour a contributor on Cold War 1994) and Wang Yujing’s indecisive script, characters that demanded anything but empathy, an abject and infuriating flight of fancy with regards to quarantine life in Hong Kong and a message buried so far beneath the surface it’s all but invisible. Or it could be someone realised no one’s really feeling a quarantine drama just yet.
This is a jailable offence
Seemingly wedged somewhere between The Eight Hundred and the Cannes favourite Black Dog and the crowd-pleasing Dongji Rescue, Guan churned out this maudlin, wanky piece of Daily Affirmation, set and shot during COVID lockdown in Hong Kong. A man, a failed rock musician whose busted dreams are now causing money problems, and a woman trying to get home to her sick mother while juggling an autistic son and divorce-demanding husband wind up in adjacent quarantine hotel rooms for 14 (intially 21) days. He, let’s call him Man410 (Huang Bo, who was much more engaging in Creation of the Gods) and Woman412 (Ni Ni, who was much more engaging in Dongji) are both transiting back to China when they run smack into Hong Kong’s now legendary quarantine rules. Woman412 made a hotel reservation, Man410 did not, and so winds up sharing a room with a total, mercenary stranger (Henick Chou Hon-ning, the lone relatable character). They’re both unhappy in their lives for reasons, they’re both frustrated by not knowing how to move forward, they’re both strangers in a strange land. Naturally, they forge an anonymous friendship that helps them steer through this choppy moment in their lives. Then they separate, knowing they’ll never see each other again, but better for the experience.
Just kidding. While they do separate and make friends and all that hoo-haa, we watch them do so while being varying degrees of obnoxious, insensitive, unlikeable and downright criminal. Depsite the COVID rules, Man410 and Woman412 find all sorts of ways to raise a middle finger to the law and go out to the daipaidong across the street (what, now?), talk face to face across the balcony (huh?), visit each other’s hotel rooms (oh get stuffed) and so on. As a bonus Man410 demonstrates zero consideration for his roommate – the kid who essentially rescues him from a stay at Penny’s Bay and then offers up his home after they’re sprung from solitary.
Less a problem of two characters for whom you can muster no empathy – frustration would be fine given the situation, but these two are dicks – is that Guan, He and Wang don’t have a handle on what film they’re making. Instead of a focused, astute character drama with a never-will-be couple in two spaces that clocks out at 90 minutes, Guan waffles on for two full hours – an hour after the fucking quarantine part ends. Yeah. They get out and then wander the city à la Before Sunrise, say little of substance and text and WhatsApp, sorry WeChat, call relatives about their various miseries. So it’s not a drama about connection in dire circumstances, it’s not about the old guy and the young guy in the room (I’d watch that), it’s not about arriving in a space where social, economic and political dynamics are shifting in real time. What A Man and A Woman is about is anyone’s guess. It ambles and rambles with no clear destination, DOP Zhang Ying doesn’t capture anything new visually, and it has no insights about the security of anonymity or the anonymity of urban life, brought into stark relief by the pandemic. Also? Pandemic. I don’t know about you but I’m not ready to revisit that fuckery.
A Man and a Woman isn’t entirely without its amusing bits. Lam Suet as a kindly cop (sigh), Nina Paw Hei-ching as a kindly neighbour (so much kindness) and a surprise turn by MIA Cherry Ngan Cheuk-ling are welcome diversions. Most hilariously, most of us will agree that Hong Kong films produced about or during this time period have quickly developed an idetifiable thematic timestamp: The world and the city are shit now, it’s never going to regain its mojo, we might as well throw our hands up and pack it in. Got a Canadian/Australian/New Zealand passport? Time to pull it out of mothballs. Guan’s conclusion, however, is a bittersweet one, with Man410 and Woman412 going back to their lives in a melachony mood (in two cabs. Last I looked there was one airport), but comfortable in the knowledge that everything, including the SAR, is going to be just fine in the end. Like I said. Piss off.