Play Like a Girl
Esports would almost take a backseat to social criticism were it not for some gonzo gameplay.
GAmer Girls
Directors: Veronica Bassetto, Sophie Yang • Writer: Veronica Bassetto
Starring: Angela Yuen, Sabrina Cheung, Kayan9896, Alma Kwok, Ng Wing-sze
Hong Kong • 1hr 42mins
Opens Hong Kong March 12 • IIB
Grade: B
In Gamer Girls | 電競女孩, an all women’s crew of MMO gamers called The Dollhouse reunites after disbanding, a unilateral decision by the team’s unofficial leader, Summer (Angela Yuen Lai-lam, Measure in Love). It’s been years, and the five women on the team, Summer, Raven (Sabrina Cheung Man-sha), Miko (Jeannie Ng Ka-yan AKA Kayan9896, The Lyricist Wannabe), Lilith (actual gamer Alma Kwok Yi-kwan) and Kaki (Ng Wing-sze, Mad Fate) have found themsevles subject to any number of real life stresses and imdignities in the interim, including Summer, who thought a safe, “normal” job and maybe a finacé would solve her problems. It didn’t. She’s an office drone and she’s miserable. Meantime, Raven is teetering on the verge of homelessness and living out of her van despite seemingly supportive parents. Miko is Raven’s worried friend, so worried she has little time to consider or act on her queerness. Surprise surprise, Lilith, the “pretty” one, spent most of her gaming time getting dismissed because of her looks and told she’d be better pimping product. Oh, and then revenge porn. Kaki has the least at stake, mostly because she treats the games as games, and is really just happy to see her friends together again. How writer Veronica Bassetto managed to pull off the subversive messages tucked inside Gamer Girls is anyone’s guess, but bless her, she did.
But then again, Bassetto (born and raised in Hong Kong and fluent in Cantonese by the way) and directing partner Sophie Yang aren’t really trying to hide their feminist, queer, anti-corporate sentiments beneath the film’s hyper-stylised cut scene aesthetic. Imperfect but engaging, and carried along by a charming cast, Gamer Girls – which earned a slot at Rotterdam in January – has plenty on its mind (the similar buzzy Good Game was much more a standard comedy); it’s just dressed up with energetic League of Legends-style VFX on a next-to-nothing budget. Props, Ms Bassetto and Ms Yang.
Another product of the FFFI, Gamer Girls starts with Summer wistfully gazing at a game tournament poster and obviously regretting her life decisions. Despite being the one to close The Dollhouse, she sucks it up and contacts her estranged teammates and floats the idea of getting the band back together. Kaki’s all for it, Raven and Miko give her some side-eye, not quite trusting her to see it through, and Lilith all but tears her a new one, reminding Summer how she fucked with everyone’s lives by essentially deciding for them how they would go. They get over their rocky re-start and find their gaming groove with a little help from former champ-turned-coach Login (Chase Chan Chung-chak), himself a victim of online chatter stemming from an esports scandal years before. The game they’re training for is “Dystopian Glory”, and they’re doing pretty well – even better when they branch out on their own and start their own amateur league in Lilith’s cha chaan teng. The CCT league attracts all kinds of players, some in it for a good time, some angling to qualify for bigger, officially sanctioned tournaments. Operative words: officially sanctioned. The cha chaan teng players disrupt the smooth commodification of esports and get in the way of selling loosely related product, so the relevant authorities step in and shut them down. Leading the quash is Ms Chiu (Vincci Cheuk Wan-chi), ironically The Dollhouse’s old manager, now a gaming exec.
Bassetto’s script is the kind of overstuffed that happens when a filmmaker comes at the material as if this might be the only opportunity they’ll ever have to make a movie. Fair point in Hong Kong, but Bassetto and Yang have managed the almost impossible task of giving a CGI-heavy adventure a backbone and a clear POV. Bassetto gently skewers cynical attempts by the powers that be to make esports into a diversion that can also be economically exploited, and she takes aim at the persistent misogyny in online gaming and the outsized amount of power business, here Big Gaming, has on policy that impacts everyone’s lives. That thematic friskiness is complemented by what’s likely to get Gamer Girls the lion’s share of its ink: its playful game environments. The fictional “Dystopian Glory” was designed by Bassetto (no duh, a graphics student in university) and realised with help from a relatively young crew that includes DOP Dave Cheung Ho-tak (a second unit DOP on Ricky Ko’s Time), Dorothy Lau Gwan-tung’s production and cosplay-ready costume design, and 18 months of work by VFX supervisor Derek Wong Tze-wei. Fun fact, there are more CGI shots in Gamer Girls than in Jurassic Park, but like that film they’re in support of the storytelling; the bright colours, familiar game mechanics and ultimate fight moves mirror The Dollhouse’s struggles, triumphs and reconnections outside the tournaments. Gamer Girls is an ambitious debut for Bassetto and Yang, who do a lot with a little, but that’s not surprising. Because you know. Never send a man to do women’s work.