Comrades, Almost a Love Story (Tian mi mi)

 

Director Peter Chan Ho-Sun

COMRADES, ALMOST A LOVE STORY (Tian mi mi)                A                                      Hong Kong  (118 mi)  1997  d: Peter Chan Ho-Sun

Sweetly, you smile sweetly.
It looks like flowers blossoming in the spring wind,
Blossoming in the spring wind.
Where, where have I seen you before?
Your smile is so familiar,
But I can’t recall at this moment.
Ah! In my dreams...
In my dreams, in my dreams I’ve seen you before.
Sweetly, you smile so sweetly.
It’s you!  It’s you!  The one in my dreams is you!

—Tian mi mi (Sweet Honey), theme song sung by Teresa Teng, Tian Mi Mi – Teresa Teng Lyrics [CHINESE MANDARIN | PINYIN YouTube (3:25)

A nuanced, richly detailed love story that spans ten years and follows the aspirations of two star-crossed Chinese mainlanders who simultaneously come to Hong Kong in 1986 with a dream of assimilation in search of upward economic mobility, a journey finally taking them to New York, where they blend into the Chinese melting pot of America.  The film stars Maggie Cheung as Li Qiao, ambitious, shrewd, and hard-working, an opportunistic entrepreneur from Guangzhou who takes a backward newcomer, Leon Lai, playing naïve northerner Li Xiao-jun under her wings, where the mutual experience of physical dislocation and urban isolation quickly escalates into a heated love affair until a stock market crash signals the end, “You’re not what brought me to Hong Kong, and I’m not what brought you,” only to meet again three years later after he marries his childhood sweetheart, Fang Xiao-ting, played by newcomer Kristy Yang, where a stream of narrated letters written to her poetically underscores the cultural differences.  Their passion rekindles, but she becomes a girlfriend to Hong Kong triad mob boss Pao (Eric Tsang) for security and safety, and is forced to depart for New York, where they cross paths once again in a glorious moment that reflects a genuine love that fills the screen. Unapologetically romantic and genuinely moving, Chan is able to navigate us through a labyrinth of detours and pitfalls for the featured lovers without cloying sentimentality.  Foregoing part of his salary in order to guarantee the signing of Cheung, the film reflects on the experiences of youth, displacement, Chinese diaspora and cultural identity, and trying to find a place in a vibrant Hong Kong, which has long been a gateway for Chinese migrants who follow a dream.  With opportunities for the accumulation of wealth and social mobility limited in 1980’s China, the prospects of achieving middle-class status is achievable only in the freedom of Hong Kong, a land of opportunities for migrants who want a better life, just like the American Dream.  Issues of identity plague the territory and take on an elevated significance since the signing of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration announcing the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, where this film serves as an allegory for that tenuous relationship.  Hong Kong is a dream for mainlanders, but for most in Hong Kong, with the handover looming, many are looking to leave for the West.  While there was initially a rush of anticipation about a hopeful transnational reunification, that reality has been a crushing disappointment, as all dreams have been dashed by a repressive push to abolish all democratic freedoms in Hong Kong, including freedom of the press, while also wiping out what was a world renowned film industry.  Drenched in romanticism, filled with a yearning for a better life, this becomes a eulogy and nostalgic love letter to a Hong Kong that no longer exists, where its historical destination as a transit stop for those seeking economic prosperity came to an abrupt end, becoming a bittersweet goodbye to the dreams of youth, having been suffocated out of existence by the repressive authoritarian rule of Communist China, now just a lingering memory, where this represents the best the Hong Kong film industry had to offer, resulting in one of the standout films from the Handover period, listed at #12 in a list of The 100 best Hong Kong movies - Time Out.  An important differentiation with Hollywood is that most Hong Kong films didn’t have readings, or rehearsals, where the directors never worked with the actors much, with no rigid shooting schedule, which were often spread out over several months.  In the old days, they didn’t even work with scripts.  Postproduction work was also very quick, with this film released in the theater just six weeks after shooting stopped, including editing and locking the picture, also the sound mixing, yet in the pre-Dolby era, this was among the longest in the director’s career, which accounts for fewer flaws.  Best Actress Award for Cheung, Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Film, winner in 9 of 11 nominated categories at the 1997 Hong Kong Film Awards.

Written by Ivy Ho, the film overcomes genre categorizations and some of the sappy musical cues and cleverly mixes humor with nostalgia, all leading up to Hong Kong’s sovereign return to the Chinese mainland in 1997, which is initially eagerly anticipated, coinciding with a stock market surge, but also reality sets in as the market cools its heels just prior to the ultimate transfer back to the mainland.  Li Xiao-jun stays in a room provided by his Aunt Rosie (Irene Tsu), who runs a brothel and continually fantasizes about American actor William Holden, maintaining a shrine to him in her room, with an enlarged portrait surrounded by fan magazine clippings, while McDonald’s becomes a setting for international public relations, as learning English takes on a sudden significance in the job market, where the English teacher is none other than Hong Kong cinematographer par excellence Christopher Doyle, famous for his collaboration with Wong Kar-wai, chanting “die you bastard, die” as they watch an American cowboy movie.  Chan films the Tsim Sha Tsui, the most prosperous commercial district in Hong Kong, a bit differently than other filmmakers, reflective of different races and cultures, including a recurring image of the Opportunity Furniture Store, an abandoned storefront with a Sikh Indian sitting in front, or a white English teacher who couples with a Thai prostitute (Michelle Gabriel), and the low-budget shops of Chungking Mansions, an offbeat international landmark with its maze of shops and restaurants offering a look of multicultural diversity, also featured prominently in Wong Kar-wai’s CHUNGKING EXPRESS (1994).  The film is immersed in a tender romanticism, accentuated by the songs of Taiwanese pop star Teresa Teng, who actually becomes a subplot to the main narrative, as her songs are adored by the Chinese mainlanders who secretly bypass the official Chinese censorship of her music (banned as part of Deng Xiaoping’s Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign from 1983 until restrictions were lifted in 2015), while the more cosmopolitan residents of Hong Kong openly show disinterest while secretly adoring her music as well.  Teng becomes emblematic of the duality of a split nation, singing songs in Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Indonesian, and English, bridging the international divide, fusing Western elements with classical Chinese, becoming the most popular Chinese singer in the world, where her music exudes a long sought after hope for freedom, a reminder of the émigré Chinese experience tinged with a nostalgia for all that was left behind.  Her tragic death during production at the early age of 42 inspired Chan to change the film’s Chinese title to one of her best known songs, which the young couple initially sing together while riding on his bicycle, Comrades: Almost a Love Story (1996) - Bike Scene YouTube (30 seconds), where a mutual love for her music mirrors their own attraction, like a unifying force, as the film is essentially an elegy to her music, 2013台北電影節｜甜蜜蜜 Comrades: Almost a Love Story YouTube (3:21).  On several occasions, Cheung somewhat ironically calls Lai by his official title, preceding his full name by the word comrade, a reminder of the mainland influence in their upbringing, but it also adds an element of personal intimacy to their relationship.  Westerners will most likely find that amusing, as it transforms communist ideology and becomes a term of endearment.  Also amusing is the repeated camera angle from inside an ATM machine, where both jostle in front of it to make transactions, where Cheung’s bank account becomes an accurate measurement for their lifted or deflated spirits.  But easily the most amusing element of the film is the use of Eric Tsang, noted for his legendary Hong Kong gangster roles, who is charmingly adorable and menacing at the same time, exerting a certain authority and presence, ordering mafia hits with complete nonchalance while instructing Cheung not to interrupt his back massage.  

Towards the end of the movie Aunt Rosie becomes increasingly ill, so Li Xiao-jun watches LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING (1955) on video, which was shot on location in Hong Kong, nominated for 8 Academy Awards, winning three, and learns more details about how she met Holden during the filming and had dinner with him at the famous Peninsula Hotel (3,264 × 2,448 pixels), with viewers remaining unsure whether this actually happened or is a wish fulfillment myth.  After her death, however, he discovers a trunk full of mementos from that evening, including a Peninsula Hotel menu and napkin, as well as photos with Holden and a woman resembling his aunt at a much younger age, yet her past, along with Hollywood’s historic relation to Hong Kong, simply evaporates over time.  Chan, a Second Wave filmmaker who was trained in film history, having understudied with John Woo after attending UCLA film school, cleverly integrates this storyline into a film about Chinese identity, where it’s important to realize how Hollywood viewed a very Westernized Hong Kong pre-transfer, believing it was created by white Westerners for white Western eyes, a reminder of the milestones of Hong Kong’s colonial history.  To that end, in 2000 Chan co-founded Applause Pictures in order to promote greater collaboration between Thailand, Korea, Japan, and Singapore, hoping to share talent and resources and also expand the regional and global distribution possibilities for new pan-Asian films.  Born and raised in Thailand, Chan offers a unique, somewhat internationalized Hong Kong perspective, reflective of the revulsion shown to mainlanders migrating from China to Hong Kong, still speaking Mandarin instead of the local Cantonese dialect, yet it’s also important to understand that nearly everyone in Hong Kong migrated from China, but they arrived in different time periods, suggesting there is a rootless status of Chinese people, disconnected perhaps by economic deprivation.  In homage of the social realist world of Jacques Demy, Chan beautifully combines realism into what amounts to a romantic love story, adding Demy’s charming use of missed opportunities in his lyrical pastiche The Young Girls of Rochefort (Les demoiselles de Rochefort) (1967), where the couple, once separated, continually criss-cross past one another in a pattern of near misses as they go about their daily routines, so caught up in the humdrum of everyday life that they fail to notice the possibilities that might be waiting for them just around the corner, which is especially prevalent once they arrive in New York City, where the Chinatown district and racial diversity very closely resembles the look of the streets of Hong Kong.  This frustration allows the audience to anticipate any number of possibilities as well, not all of them happy outcomes, such as the utterly devastating scene where Lai reveals to his wife the truth about his unfaithful relationship with Cheung, or the vividly real moment in New York where a man’s entire life is reduced to a senseless murder, so by the time this story ends they are two lonely outsiders in a teeming metropolis.  Both are transfixed by a stream of television news reports playing in the storefront window of an electronics appliance store, paying tribute to the life and death of Teresa Teng, who once more magically brings them together again, their destiny apparently fulfilled, where there is a feeling that it truly earns this kind of remarkably choreographed finale, Comrades ~Almost a Love Story Ending Scene YouTube (10:53).  Grappling with the failures of both Chinese and American Dreams, this is a charming film that tugs at our emotions with what is easily one of Maggie Cheung’s most timeless and heart-wrenching performances, balanced by Lai’s soft spoken grace and naiveté, but also an intelligence and wit throughout that endears us to these characters and their lives, turning the world itself into a wonderful mosaic that actually matters to us more afterwards.

Watch Comrades: Almost a Love Story Full Movie ... - FshareTV  available for free online with multiple subtitle options (1:15:54) 

16th Annual Hong Kong Film Awards
• Winner - Best Picture
• Winner - Best Director (Peter Chan Ho-Sun)
• Winner - Best Actress (Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk)
• Winner - Best Supporting Actor (Eric Tsang Chi-Wai)
• Winner - Best Screenplay (Ivy Ho)
• Winner - Best Cinematography (Jingle Ma Chor-Sing)
• Winner - Best Art Direction (Yee Chung-Man)
• Winner - Best Costume Design (Ng Lei-Lo)
• Winner - Best Original Music Score (Chui Jun-Fun)
• Nomination - Best Actor (Leon Lai Ming)
• Nomination - Best New Artist (Kristy Yeung Kung-Yu)

After the Storm (Umi yori mo mada fukaku)

 

Director Hirokazu Kore-eda

 


 

AFTER THE STORM (Umi yori mo mada fukaku)              B                                

Japan  (117 mi)  2016  d:  Hirokazu Kore-eda                      Official Site [Japan]

A director that seems driven to summon up the characteristics of what it is to be Japanese, often doing so by recalling the works of great Japanese directors of the past, especially Ozu and Naruse, though the director is quick to throw in Ken Loach as well, claiming he is a stylist of working class dramas, using a similar style and structure, where the goal appears to integrate the present with the past, offering a single, unbroken line in the observance of family life.   With a history in documentary film, including a recent made-for-TV tribute to Hiroshima entitled ISHUBIMI (2015), the director eschews sentimentality, preferring to film quiet human observances that are rendered in stark detail, where his family oriented films of late are surprisingly lyrical and gentle, documents of almost elegiac depictions of small but impactful moments, the kind of thing ignored by other directors, perhaps the antithesis of Eugene O’Neill slugfests, family dramas that feature plenty of shouting and incendiary personal confession.  Kore-eda’s father was a soldier in the Kwantung army in the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria, defeated by the Soviet army in 1945, one of 500,000 men sent to Siberian POW labor camps, where a tenth of them died in prison, and not all were released until the early 1950’s.  As a result, his father lost a good portion of his life, where it was a real struggle for him afterwards, while his son, perhaps because of it, makes films where every precious moment matters.  His characters are by no means perfect or idealized, but in this case, extremely relatable, as they resemble ordinary people we know.  Once again he’s developed one of his own stories, an intimate domestic drama centered around a divorce, where various family members have to reassess the damage while attempting to put the collective pieces of their lives back together again.  Interestingly, the Japanese title comes from a line, “even deeper than the sea,” from a 1987 pop song Wakare No Yokan from Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng, Japanese song : 別れの予感 Wakare no Yokan, Teresa Teng - YouTube  (4:01), though the original romantic sentiment has been transformed to invoke family ties that transcend love and death. 

Set in Kiyose, a city on the outskirts of Tokyo, much of it is shot in the low-rent housing compound where the director grew up, we’re initially introduced to Ryota, Hiroshi Abe from I Wish (Kiseki) (2011), a down-on-his-luck character still living on the reputation of a successful novel written fifteen years ago, who hasn’t written anything since, yet mooches off others to scrape up money for the track, as his propensity for gambling squanders much of his earnings.  As a result, he’s on the outside looking in on his family, divorced from Kyoko, Yōko Maki from Like Father, Like Son (Soshite Chichi Ni Naru) (2013), who’s had enough of his nonsense, threatening to forbid him from seeing his 11-year old son Shingo (Taiyô Yoshizawa) until he catches up on his child support payments, putting him in even more desperate straits.  Ryota is charming and witty, an extremely likeable kind of guy you would like to spend time with, yet is something of an incorrigible con man as well, working part-time at a detective agency with a partner (Sôsuke Ikematsu), mostly missing pets and extramarital affairs, with both displaying questionable ethics, yet he continually tells others he’s simply gaining material for his next book, though he spends a good deal of his time spying on his ex-wife, taking special interest in the rich guy she’s currently seeing, a bit perturbed at his smug stability, fearful he will take his place in the family.  Haunted by his own bad habits that bear a strange similarity to those of his recently deceased father, it leaves him continually dwelling on the past, stuck in limbo, unable to move forward in life, mostly wracked by the guilt he feels for causing his wife Kyoko to divorce him.  Scrounging through his father’s belongings, pathetically looking for something valuable that he can pawn, he discovers a stack of old pawn slips and lottery tickets, habits he’s inherited, exactly the kinds of things that prevented his father from ever moving his mother out of this broken down housing complex.  Though he only gets to see his son once a month, he genuinely enjoys their time together and regrets not having more of an influence in his young life, though Shingo seems surprisingly unaffected by the drama and appreciates the warmth and honesty he feels from his father.  What separates this film from other more maudlin works is the biting wit and humor to be found throughout, as these characters are familiar with one another, where by now there are no secrets, openly dispensing criticism or opinions, where Ryota’s elderly mother Yoshiko (Kirin Kiki), the unsung hero in the film, cleverly sees through everyone’s flaws, yet always remains upbeat and optimistic. 

Father and son enjoy their day together, where Ryota, of course, tries to buy his affections, splurging on things he cannot afford, while at the same time pestering him with questions about his mother’s new boyfriend.  Shingo sees through a lot of this, showing more maturity than his still adolescent father, who tries to introduce his son to rebellious activities, as this is what he remembers from his own youth.  Knowing a storm is about to hit, he decides to have a family dinner with Grandma, whose mood and energy immediately grows more robust at being included, joined by his non-nonsense sister Chinatsu (Satomi Kobayashi) who sees through this personal scheme, calling Kyoko to come pick up Shingo just as the storm hits, a deluge of wind and rain, the 23rd typhoon of the year, according to reports, leaving them all stranded in Yoshiko’s home for the night, much to her delight.  While it’s all a plot to reconcile with his former wife, in the claustrophobic environment of Ryota’s childhood home everyone has private moments together, allowing Ryota a few moments with Kyoko, who suspects a conspiracy afoot, but as her son is happy with the idea, she doesn’t make a fuss.  But when Ryota tries to make his case that he wants to be a better father for Shingo, she wants to know why this never got into him until now, and if his own father’s failings bothered him, why didn’t he provide a better home for his mother, as instead he wasted plenty of years, something she’s not likely to forget, adding a bit of sting to her firmness, all but quashing his dream.  At the height of the storm, Ryota runs outside with Shingo to hide inside the plastic octopus in the play area, completely protected from the rain, something he used to do as a kid.  As he’s reliving old times, suggesting he wants to lead a better life, be a better Dad than his father was, his son asks him, “Are you who you want to be?”  Somewhat caught off-guard by the directness of the question, he can only express his belief that he’s still working on it, that he’s not there yet.  Back inside afterwards, some of the best shared moments are between Kyoko and Grandma, where it’s clear Yoshiko values and appreciates what she’s endured, thinking of her as one of her own, even if her deadbeat son blew his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with her, always chasing some elusive dream that never comes, wondering aloud, “Why can’t men love in the present?”  In this enclosed space, Ryota and his family must confront their deepest failures and the haunting truth of unrealized dreams.  With the realization that you can’t get back what you lose, there’s really no magical resolution, but there’s always an opportunity to be a better person, to heal the self-inflicted wounds, and provide a more sustained and responsible effort in becoming someone worthy of admiration from those we love.