Movie Review: Hong Kong Ghost Stories/猛鬼愛情故事

Last week Desmond So and I headed to the Cine Art at Amoy Gardens for a moment of bromance. We were there on a Wednesdy afternoon to see **Hong Kong Ghost Stories/猛鬼愛情故事 , the latest film(s) from Wong Jing and Patrick Kong.**

We left a seat between us though, since even we have our limits.

Full disclosure: Desmond got tickets from Jennifer Tse Ting Ting, who was the lead in the first half of the film. It’s not like objectivity was ever my strong suit, but I figured I’d be honest here. She helped me interview her father and has always been unfailingly (and mystifyingly) kind to me, so you can see where this leads, I am sure.

I’m not sure if my opinion is more skewed by Jennifer looking like this:

Or Andy On looking like this:

Hong Kong Ghost Stories/猛鬼愛情故事 is two short films, each directed by a different person. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it was probably budgetary concerns rather than any artistic endeavor.

I don’t care how stout the branch is; you put my 275#/125kg @ss AND Wong Jing’s on a branch together and that puppy’s gonna snap.

The film starts with a very funny (and very cheap) skit in a funeral home and features cameos by Sammy Leung and Jeana Ho. They return at the midpoint and end of the film, and I found it funny in a nostalgic way.

The first segment, “Classroom,” features the aforementioned Ms. Tse as a substitute schoolteacher, Ms. Jennifer Yip (laziness knows no bounds) put in charge of the unruly Class 4E. She is also dealing with her abusive ex-boyfriend, who stalkerishly waits for her every night at her minibus stop.

But something’s… not right.

Other than a class full of savage little miscreants and having Travis Bickle as your love interest, I mean.

Ms. Yip discovers that some of her students, including the seemingly innocent Don Don, spend their evenings lying in bed.

As a job.

When Ms. Yip tries to intercede, she is vociferously berated by another female student, played by ‘E Cup’ Carol Yeung Tsz Yiu.

I’m typing with one hand.

Malloclusion aside, I have to say that I find Carol eminently more watchable than her biggest (pun) leng mo colleague Chrissie Chau.

But more about the four of them later.

As if all of this personal stuff wasn’t enough, things start to get creepy. Locked in a bathroom that bleeds (I saw them at the small stage at Glastonbury in ’98), Ms. Yip starts to have problems that are not of this world.

Given the title, that’s to be expected, innit?

This is hardly new ground for Hong Kong movies; haunted schools were a staple (before the intended market became a place where ghosts don’t exist), and we’ve seen it all done before, both better and worse.

30 seconds in the microwave, it’ll warm right up.

Like all Wong Jing films, this isn’t going to win any awards, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t entertained. Which is the point of these things.

I found myself pleasantly distracted, laughed a few times, and enjoyed, if nothing else, a rare throwback to the glory days when ghosts were ghosts and Hong Kong movies were fun.

After the film was over, I sent Jennifer a message, telling her I enjoyed her part of the film. She told me she was relieved, and that whenever people had given her feedback about the film, she had been wondering “But what will Sean think?”

I felt kind of bad.  Because striking fear in the hearts of actors, especially those I know, isn’t really something I want to do.

“Good thinking, numbnuts…”

Then again, I wouldn’t mind if Jim Chim was afraid of me.

F@#$ him.

I wouldn’t mind frightening a few directors, producers, and screenwriters, either. Because to me, they are most often at fault when I dislike a film.

Let me share with you some of my rationale in examining movies of this type, specifically movies that involve people I know personally.

Jennifer’s first film was Bruce Lee is my Brother, in which she played the teenage Bruce’s love interest. As I point out in my review, the screenwriter and the director did such a lousy job of presenting the relationship that she came off as little more than set dressing; she was there, and you kind of knew why, but in terms of actual presence, there wasn’t much.

But that’s not her fault.

For  ”Classroom,” I am fairly certain that she didn’t receive a whole lot of direction for her role.

Even if she did, it was given to her by Wong Jing.

Her dialogue, and the scrīpt that contained it, were things that she could not control.

Even if she could, it was all written by Wong Jing.

Actually, Wong Jing deserves credit for at least one thing in this film: he managed to make someone who makes a living by her appearance look plain.

In the same way that Louis Koo simply looks like a movie star, Jennifer Tse looks like a celebrity. She was quite literally bornto it.

She was Photoshopped by God, whereas the rest of us are lucky if we get two minutes in Paint before He checks his email.

In **Hong Kong Ghost Stories/猛鬼愛情故事**** , she looks… average. Using almost no cosmetics, and dressing in very neutral (boring, even) tones, she manages (almost) to look like a substitute schoolteacher.**

I’ve taught for almost two decades. Teachers don’t look like that. Trust me.

In fact, I thought it would have been funny to have a scene where she shows up dressed well and made up; the rotten little students would have been rendered speechless. But oh well.

I think she did a very good job with what she had to work with, and has nothing to be ashamed of in terms of her performance.

My magnanimity in this matter mayhave something to do with my response to the second half of the film.

Some people have called me unfairly vituperative, demanding, and overly critical when it comes to movies.

Well, f@#$ them. When I want your opinion I’ll beat it out of you. Deal?

You know what my criteria are for movies these days? I want to be entertained. I don’t want to be annoyed, insulted, or bored.

If that’s too much to ask, then so be it.

Ohhhh, where to start?

Patrick Kong gave us the ‘twist ending’ so much it became a trademark, such that you end up waiting to see which of the cast is lying, and about what.

At this point if the little dullard abandoned the twist, THAT would be a twist.

He also gave us Mr. and Mrs. Single, a film so eager to chug the China Market C*ck that it is literally full of an opaque white liquid.

Don’t worry, it’s milk.

But its milk from China, so actually youshould worry.

Kong’s segment of **Hong Kong Ghost Stories/猛鬼愛情故事**** , called “Travel,” is told mostly in flashback. The segment opens at a funeral (in the same home as the intermediate segments) for Bobo, played by Chrissie Chau Sau Na (Sauna???).**

In the opening, scene, Bobo is actually played by aportrait of Chau, but you get my point.

A group of women play cards in the empty funeral home, remebering their friend and the trip to Thailand on which they met.

Those women are played Rose Chan, Jacqeuline Chong, Charmaine Fong,  and Harriet Yeung.

I’m sorry, but I’m not even going to bother with a synopsis. And it’s all my fault. I totally lost focus.

In truth, I found these four to be so completely, outrageously and teeth-gnashingly annoying that I was prayingthe story would involve torture, dismemberment, flaying and murder.

No, and I don’t like watching your fat @ss either.

Sadly, I didn’t get allmy wishes.

What’s also sad is that they are not, apparently, being excessively bothersome, only acting in a way that people either expect of them or accept in real life.

Whenever I see this behavīor in films, I make it a point to ask around if locals think this is funny or unusual, and the answers I get are a yes and a no.

However, for me it simply sh*t up the film so badly that I couldn’t keep my eyes on it.

The story, what little of it there is, involves money, lies, murder, ghosts, and the New Territories starring as Thailand. No, really.

You cheap f@#$s.

You can kind of make all that stuff out in the background behind the four screeching b*tches, but you have to try really hard because they take up so much of your sight and hearing.

There are twists too, but since we know they’ve got to be there, it’s not like I’m spoiling the film, just providing plot points.

“Travel” is filmed, written and acted with a level of ineptitude (my favorite being an obvious continuity fail that a four-year-old would notice) that at least makes you glad people with significant mental handicaps are obviously making headway in the workforce.

Speaking of which…

Chrissie Chau is basically unattractive when clothed and constitutionally incapable of acting convincingly in any context except when she is raspily bitching, and has a default facial expression that falls somewhere between a pug and a mongoloid,

and I couldn’t wait for this half of the film to end.

If this brand of shrill, shrieking shrews (!) is what Hong Kongers will accept as either entertainment, or, more shockingly, real-life behavīor from women, then I’m seriously beginning to contemplate moving.

It’s been a week since I watched this film and I still get angry just thinking about it.

F@#$ every Godd@mned one of you.

Him Lau was actually impressive in that he managed to be fairly convincing as a remote and cold-blooded person. Stephy Tang was similarly cast but didn’t manage to convince me.

So maybe Him’s performance seems elevated due to the execrable performances of his peers, but at this point I’ll take what I can get.

That said, if Kong makes Mr. and Mrs. Single 2 I’ll kill him.

I guess I can at least thank Wong Jing and Patrick Kong for making a rare and resolutely local film that can’t play in China, where ghosts don’t exist, a film that panders to and reflects the citizens of our fair city.

And I can thank Wong Jing for allowing me to stare at Jennifer Tse for 45 minutes without going to jail.

I can thank Patrick Kong for making yet another piece of crap, assuring me that he hasn’t changed, much less improved. A for consistency, D for content.

And I can thank him for reminding me why I am, of late, increasingly grateful that I am single.

Trying mightily to look on the bright side of this, I can at least imagine Jennifer Tse and Andy On having a quiet dinner in a nice restaurant. Jennifer will say “I just feel so bad. I did my best with my part of the movie, but all that stuff after my part was just horrible.”

Andy will look at her and say “I know what you mean. I was inTrue Legend.”