Hollywood Hong Kong

Initially, I didn't think much of Fruit Chan. I don't really do horror movies, so while I'd watched the 'Dumplings' piece, Fruit Chan's story from portmanteu movie, Three Extremes, I wasn't particularly impressed.

I was really taken by the idea behind Public Toilet, but I'm not really an arthouse guy either, and this was the most arthouse of his oeuvre. The film struck me as being rather like it's subject -- shit -- and I really struggled to watch but eventually gave up half way through.

I didn't give up on him though, and his earlier films, Made in Hong Kong (1997) and Little Cheung (1999) eventually turned me into a fan. So I thought I'd seen all his work when I turned up a copy of Hollywood Hong Kong (2002) last weekend.

Which was a piece of luck, really, because for my money, Hollywood Hong Kong is Fruit Chan's best film. Set in Tai Hom, a grim shanty town in the shadows of the Hollywood Housing Plaza and Shopping Mall, the film tells the story of what happens when a mainland prostitute (Zhou Xun) enters the life of a wannabe pimp (played by boy-band member Wong Yau-Nam) and a fabulous family of pork butchers (Glen Chin, Leung Sze-Ping and Ho Sai-Man.)

Apart from the butcher's youngest son, Tiny, all the men in the film fall under the spell of this magical young woman, and it's not surprising to see why -- the screen lights up whenever she appears. But despite the close proximity of the pimp and the butchers, none of them know about their relationship with the others. She's a woman who likes to compartmentalize her lives.

It isn't until people start getting letters from a Hong Kong lawyer that they begin to suspect that there might be more to this young woman than meets the eye.

Like all the best Hong Kong cinema, Hollywood Hong Kong transcends genre boundaries. Part comedy, part romance, part coming of age drama, part social realist drama, part triad flick -- Hollywood Hong Kong has something for everybody. The movie is really stolen by the pork butchers. Fruit might have cast them for their bodies, but they don't have any trouble carrying the movie with their acting. And Zhou Xun as Ting Ting/Ming Ming/Ping Ping is a sheer delight. But as with so many of Chan's other films, the real star of Hollywood Hong Kong is the island itself.

Highly recommended. Five stars.