Hong Kong in Film: 2023
So… what were the movies and moments that defined the year in Hong Kong cinema?
Some people believe a renaissance started in Hong Kong in 2022, what with the flurry of popular hits – Chili Laugh Story, The Sparring Partner, Table for Six, Warriors of Future – all coming out of lockdown and on the back of good reviews and word-of-mouth hits in the years before (Still Human, Anita, Beyond the Dream). But the pandemic, the NSL, and a flight of talent to anyplace else has put that renaissance on its heels. Or has it? There were plenty of head-scratching moments in Hong Kong’s moribund – or is it reviving? – film scene and admittedly a handful of fist-pumps. Here’s what stood out. — DEK
10. The New Champ
If you say you predicted the runaway success of Jack Ng Wai-lun’s A Guilty Conscience you’re a lying liar who lies. Currently Hong Kong’s all time box office champ, it raked in over HK$110 million as of 29 December, well ahead of second place Oppenheimer (almost HK$75 million) for the year as well as previous champ Kung Fu Hustle (not adjusted for inflation). No, that doesn’t touch the all time winner – Avengers: Endgame – but it beats Top Gun: Maverick and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Looking back, however, it’s not surprising given the shitty inflection point the film landed at: Conscience rode a post-lockdown burst of energy, it had a popular lead in Dayo Wong Chi-wah, a cool rising star in Louise Wong Dan-ni, a story about an underdog getting justice, the rich getting theirs, the law functioning the way it should – and a glorious cameo from Michael Wong Man-tak. Suggesting it was engineered to strike a chord with Hongkongers as part of a grand conspiracy wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility. Will this kind of lightning in a bottle happen again in 2024? Will first-timer Ng direct another blockbuster? Who knows, but it was a welcome bit of good news, and great while it lasted.
09. A Case for Public Funding
Few national film industries are without some kind of public support. Look around and you’ll see the CNC (France), the BFI National Lottery (UK), Screen Australia, Telefilm Canada, Fidecine (Mexico), KOFIC (South Korea), the Mongolian National Film Council… You get the idea. Of course, say “government funding” to an artist and they will rightfully bristle. But in many cases, like in Hong Kong where financing for emerging filmmakers has all but dried up, it’s a necessary compromise. As hard as it is to admit, the Film Development Council/Create Hong Kong’s First Feature Film Initiative (FFFI) has done some good. Since 2013 the fund has bankrolled 18 features, 10 of which were theatrically released and, more crucially, hit the international film festival circuit to significant acclaim. The budgets are now up to HK$8 million (US$1.02 million, the cost of The Raid, Rocky, three Evil Deads) and most filmmakers will agree the lack of demand for box office success leave them room to simply create, and the relatively low budgets compel them to get clever. The fund started strong and the roster has steadily improved: Wong Chun’s Mad World, Oliver Chan Siu-kuen’s Still Human, Hand Rolled Cigarette by actor-director Kelvin Chan Kin-long, Norris Wong’s My Prince Edward , Nick Cheuk Yik-him’s Time Still Turns The Pages and Sasha Chuk’s forthcoming Fly Me to the Moon. The seventh edition selected a streaming sex comedy by Yu Sze-long; a bowling dramedy by Tom Chung-sing’s; a family tale about a stuntman (penned by FFFI-funded A Light Never Goes Out director Anastasia Tsang Hin-ling) from Albert and Herbert Leung; an immigration thriller by Isabella Lam, produced by Soi Cheang Pou-soi; a Fruit Chan-produced suicide drama by Li Sum-yuet; and Wu Chui-yi’s drama about the impact of a woman’s decision to hit the pole (as in dancing) on her family. They’ll be coming soon to a theatre near you. Here’s hoping they can keep up the pace.
08. Ciao, e Bentornato
The Far East Film Festival in Udine, in the northeastern corner of Italy, kicked off 25 years ago because its founders, Sabrina Baracetti and Thomas Bertacche, saw a Johnnie To film back in the day and decided enough was enough. Italy’s, and the surrounding European country’s, film-goers needed more Hong Kong cinema in their lives. Since then, FEFF has been a hotspot for films from Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Mongolia, China, Vietnam and every corner ’round here with films to show off. The 2023 edition came full circle, inviting Hong Kong directors To, Amos Why, Ray Lau, Vincci Cheuk (AKA GC Goo-Bi) Jack Ng, Leung Po-chi, tireless producers Winnie Tsang, Teresa Kwong and a bunch of others to raise a middle finger to the idea Hong Kong Cinema was dead.
07. Tony, Tony, Tony
Literally 100 kilometres south of Udine is Venice, and at the 80th Venice Film Festival in September, Tony Leung Chiu-wai was handed a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, set to the soundtrack of a roaring, protracted standing O. Leung got all choked up as he accepted membership in a club that includes David Cronenberg, Pedro Almodóvar and Michelangelo Antonioni, and compatriots John Woo (2010) and Ann Hui (2020). Three of Leung’s films have already won Lions: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A City of Sadness, Anh Hung Tran’s Cyclo, and Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, so it was just a matter of time. Leung’s award came a year after he won a similar prize from the Busan International Film Festival, and six months after Michelle Yeoh finally won some damn appreciation from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – an Oscar – in March. It was a glittery year for some of Hong Kong’s best.
06. Ready for Her Close-up
Starting in 2021, actor Rachel Leung Yung-ting started popping up in small parts in indies, and we don’t know about anyone else, but she’s rocketed to the top of our favourite emerging actors list. Leung has a welcome, distinct screen presence (at least for women) that’s reminiscent of Anita Mui, and her performances so far swing wildly from steely and determined (Far Far Away), to nurturing (Time Still Turns The Pages) and conventional (Ready o/r Rot 2). The turning point for Leung came this year in Lawrence Kan’s In Broad Daylight (see below) where she played a mentally challenged young woman who is sexually abused by the manager of a care facility. She earned a Golden Horse nod for her heartbreaking and infuriating work, and she should be primed for more, at the very least here in Hong Kong. We all know how cringey neurotypical actors playing at “disabled” can be, and Leung pulls it off with grace and dignity. Up next is Suk Suk director Ray Yeung Yiu-hoi’s All Shall Be Well and we welcome way, way more of her. Brava, sister.
05. Art Imitates Life
Local documentaries started the year with a moment, chiefly the crazy-high demand to see Mabel Cheung’s To My Nineteen-Year-Old Self, followed by its spectacular flame-out and retraction from cinemas due to a consent controversy. Right or wrong, the film tracking a half-dozen Ying Wa schoolgirls hit a nerve with Hongkongers across the spectrum, as all good docs should. Later on in the year the low-budget labour of love To Be Continued… became the word-of-mouth must-see for anyone with an interest in Hong Kong’s lost history, specifically the imprint cultural impresario Harry Odell left on the city. And Four Trails played to packed houses at Life is Art, and showed us all the blood, sweat and tears that go into running Hong Kong’s notorious HK4TUC. All of them were enlightening and connective in their way and hopefully bode well for the future of docs. Bonus: rumour has it the latter two are getting a release this year. Watch this space.
04. Boo and Boo again
Horror has always been a staple of Hong Kong’s movie output (the others of course being action and comedy). It’s never truly vanished but it could be making a resurgence in the wake of the so-called elevated horror (Hereditary, The Babadook) boom and amid a fussy, challenging production environment. Not all were tremendous (Social Distancing), nothing is, but the MIRROR and Error-led chillers It Remains, by Kelvin Shum (with Anson), Nate Tse’s Back Home (the other Anson), Soi Cheang’s psycho-thriller Mad Fate (Yeung Lok-man) and YUM Investigation by Dickson Leung, which rolled in comedy with the chills, all demonstrated an aesthetic and thematic wisdom in a new generation of horror directors weaned on gothic 1960s and ’70s mood pieces, Stanley Kubrick and Ari Aster. The only shit more metaphoric than horror is sci-fi and noir thrillers, so don’t be surprised if you suddenly find MIRROR in space.
03. No Dongs
Really? Someone in an anonymous office somewhere decided adults couldn’t handle co-star Charles Melton’s swinging schlong – two seconds of it, in low light – in Todd Haynes’s May December and demanded it be cut out? In 2023? And slapped it with a Cat III rating anyway? But gave the blood and gore of Napoleon a IIB? It’s This Film is Not Yet Rated up in here! Look, we’re used to distributors making snips in horror films to ensure a more lucrative IIA but taking nudity out of a film about grown-ups, by grown-ups, for grown-ups is nutty. And no one can figure out why audiences are shrinking. Fingers crossed it’s not a sign of things to come. And dear god don’t let anyone see Saltburn.
02. Keeping it Real
The social drama is back, baby, and it’s transforming Hong Kong’s constantly transforming film industry yet again. With the noisy – and defining – big(ger) budget action mayhem of the 1980s and ’90s essentially in the rearview (unless it’s a co-production) and much of industry powered by council funding, young and/or first-time filmmakers are turning their cameras on the world around them, ie Hong Kong, and interrogating the shit out of it. Recent years have welcomed A Light Never Goes Out; foster adoption drama Lost Love; The Sunny Side of the Street, about the city’s marginalised refugees; economic drama The Narrow Road; and addiction drama Drifting as a few. One of 2023’s best films was Nick Cheuk’s gutting Time Still Turns The Pages, about the legacy of childhood suicide. And one of next year’s will be Sasha Chuk’s Fly Me to the Moon, which follows sisters from mainland China growing up on the fringes of Hong Kong. It’s Mike Leigh time in the SAR.
01. ‘Daylight’ Savings
Only time will tell if director Lawrence Kan’s In Broad Daylight signalled the starting point for the emergence of a new Iranian-style cinema in Hong Kong, or if it was a fluke never to be repeated. Either way, Kan’s brave and crazy drama about an investigative reporter (!) looking into abuse and corruption (!!) happening right under the nose of the Social Welfare Department (!!!) at a care home for the elderly and disabled was the year’s best film. Produced by stealth mogul Louis Koo and trading in the classic tropes of the journalism thriller, Kan manages to juggle narrative momentum with big questions about the value of a free press in the age of clickbait and state hostility. It’s not All the President’s Men, not much is, but stars Jennifer Yu and David Chiang give it their level best.