Kung Fu Chefs

Despite being a fan of Hong Kong cinema, I'm not really a big fan of the Martial Arts genre. But whenever there's an Asian cooking movie comes out, I'm all over it like white on rice, which is why I couldn't wait to see the new Sammo Hung outing, Kung Fu Chefs.

It's been a while since I last saw Sammo in a convincing role. Real estate mogul and director Denis Law's Fatal Move, in which he plays the honourable triad leader, at war with another triad gang was probably the last thing that I thought worthwhile -- although Saat Po Long wasn't half bad either. And while he's still working as an action director -- most notably on the recent big budget chop-socky films, IP Man and Wushu, his age and girth mean that he's not exactly suited to playing the part of a Kung Fu Master any more, but he might be able to cut it as a chef. Which is why I was expecting good things from Kung Fu Chefs.

Although it appears to have been made on the mainland rather than in Hong Kong, and Chinese films in the past have lacked the commercial edge of films from the old colony, there's nothing really new about this movie and it really is a bit of a potboiler. It's got the same themes of filial betrayal and overwhelming ambition that are to be resolved in a cookery contest that you'd see in films like Stephen Chow's God of Cooking or the recent Korean offering, Le Grand Chef. Of the three, Stephen Chow's is probably the one to watch -- but then that's why Chow is currently the most bankable director in the whole of Asia, with movies like Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle doing big business on a global scale now.

And while Kung Fu Chef is no Tampopo, it's no Ramen Girl either. It's a silly, funny romp with some spectacular looking Chinese dishes and none the worse for that.

But I do wish Sammo would give up performing the Kung Fu action and stick to directing it.

Young and Dangerous: The series

When Young and Dangerous first came out in 1996, the creators could have had no idea how successful the series was going to be, though with Wong Jing (rumoured to have triad involvements of his own) on production credits, and Andrew Lau Wai-Keung (who went on to direct the Infernal Affairs trilogy) directing, you've got a pretty solid basis for any expectations.

Based on a Manga-style comic titled Teddy Boy, Young and Dangerous is the story of a group of friends who band together and join the local Hung Hing society, under the tutelage of Frankie Ng Chi Hung as older Brother Bee. Originally condemned in Hong Kong for its glamorization of Triad life, the original film was so popular, it led to a series of nine films in total, what with spin offs and prequels and sequels.

Most of the stars had a background in Cantopop, and although they're clearly involved in organized crime in the film, they aren't *that* disreputable. They'll fist fight rather than stab or shoot, are involved in gambling rather than drug running, and only ever kill their enemies when their lives depend upon it, or when they need to avenge the death of their true love, a parent or a fellow gang member.

Although Ekin Chang's character, Chan Ho Nam is the romantic leading man, the real star of the series is his right hand man, Brother Chicken, played by Jordan Chan. Ostensibly a committed womanizer, he falls for the daughter of the kung-fu fighting Catholic Priest who ministers to the government project where the gang grew up.

Besides the teen stars who play the leads, over the course of the season, some of Hong Kong's most reliable working film actors start to show up in the movies, and although they're only given smallish parts in the main series, they actually provide leading characters for some of the spin-off movies that came out of the series.

I'm thinking here in particular of the remarkable Portland Street Blues, featuring my favourite H/K actress, Sandra Ng. Sandra plays Sister 13, a lesbian member of the Hung Hing, who runs a stable of prostitutes out of Portland Street. Whether a woman could ever actually become a 'made man' in the Hung Hing Society is something else, but in the movies, she's sufficiently senior to be invited to all of their important meetings.

The other big H/K star who shows up in the series a lot is the wonderfully prolific Anthony Wong, whose compulsive nose-picking character, Tai Fai, also gets his own spin-off movie, The Legendary Tai Fai.

The Young and Dangerous films aren't the kind of art house fare that you get by directors like Johnnie To. They're melodramatic, populist pot boilers, made on the cheap with little attention to story. But they're none the worse for all that -- in fact, they might even be the better for it.

Thumbnail reviews of each movie here.
Who's who in Hung Hing?
About triads

Departures and other films

Perhaps the most critically successful Japanese movie of the last twelve months or so has been Yojiro Tokito's recent film, Departures. It's been storming the film festivals, took the Japanese Oscar, and I believe the Oscar for best foreign language film.

It's the story of a professional cellist who gets made redundant and on doing so, realizes that he'll never be in the front line of cellists. To make ends meet, him and his wife leave Tokyo and go back to his parents home, somewhere in the country, and he starts looking for another job.

Unfortunately, he isn't qualified to do anything, and when he stumbles into an interview without knowing what the job actually entails, he's very relucant at first. However, the high pay soon wins him over. But the position is so stigmatized, he initially keeps his new job from his wife -- and when she does find out, she's not at all happy.

Departures is a fine example of what the Japanese call a 'family dorama' -- the family is really the subject of all of the best Japanese films, and at the root of this story is the fact that handling the dead was regarded as something that was only done by the very lowest castes -- the Japanese version of India's untouchables. But of course, when she comes to see him laying out somebody that she cared about, the wife is eventually won over.

It is a very good film -- very Japanese, compelling because of how different their lives and their culture is to ours, and beautifully shot.

However, there's a recent film on a very similar subject called A Hardest Night that I actually much preferred.

Many things in Japan still work on the old apprenticeship system of Master and Acolyte. This includes funeral directors, as in the previous movie, Departures, but it also includes comedians.

And so when an old master of a form of comedy called Raguko is dying, all of his pupils gather around to support him in his passing, and to mourn his loss.

Raguko might be termed 'Sit down comedy' as opposed to stand up comedy. The performer sits down in traditional kimono on a pad, armed only with a fan, and tells a long, convoluted shaggy dog story. It may be that there are only so many stories and everyone knows them -- the art is in how the performer tells it and makes it his own. But I'm far from expert on the subject having seen just two films.

Anyway, the opening few scenes of this film -- in which one of the acolytes believes that the master wants to take one last look at a woman's pussy before he dies -- is one of the funniest things I've seen on screen for a very long time.

The subject matter of both films is very similar -- both are centred around death and the formal mourning of the dead. And both are very good films indeed. But of the two films, if I had to recommend just one, I'd go with A Hardest Night every time.

And while I'm here, there's another recent film about Raguko that's worth a watch as well. Talk, Talk, Talk (2007) is a film about the relationship between a Raguko comedian and his acolyte that's also well worth watching if you ever get the opportunity. It's pretty unlikely that you will, but if you're ever around at my house, I'd love to show any of them to you.

As an afterthought, here's a raguko story made into an animated short:

Atama Yama

Comrades: Almost a love story

I'm relatively new to Asian cinema. I suppose I've been watching the output obsessively for about a year now, and I sometimes think I'd be hard pressed to tell you which country I like the best, because there's aspects of all of them that I like.

When it comes to Mainland China, I love the fact that so many of them are about the lives of the proletariat, living under a communist regime. And the ways in which they're dealing with modernization is fascinating.

It was the films of Korea that started me watching Asian films in the first place. The Host, of all films. Far from one of the best, but I was seduced by the slick production values, combined with the old fashioned Korean family values that underpinned what was effectively a modern Godzilla-type monster flick.

Many of my favourites are Japanese. They older films have a subtlety and a sophistication that tends to be lacking in most of the other asian output -- though they can also match that with a banality and an impoverishment of imagination that beats out Hollywood as well.

But if I had to choose just one country's output, it would have to be that of Hong Kong. Not really a country at all, in fact, just a little region. Nevertheless, until quite recently, their films dominated the Asian market. Today, Hong Kong cinema is said to be dying, but the back catalogue contains some real treats.

Now, I'm not an art cinema guy, nor am I a world cinema type person. I've always preferred Hollywood studio stuff over small arthouse movies. And that may well be why I'm so fond of the Hong Kong film. It's almost all populist fare, aimed at entertaining a mass audience. And they like to get as many factors as possible into the mix, so a film will invariably cross multiple genres: comedy/romance/horror. Or Drama/sci-fi/historical. Sometimes, this results in the dumbest hodge podge of stories, but sometimes you get an absolutely sublime tale that really moves and engages you.

And if I had to pick a single favourite Hong Kong film, then I'd have to go with Peter Chen's film, Comrades: Almost A Love Story.

Comrades is the story of a country boy (Leon Lai) who arrives in Hong Kong and meets a highly driven, highly ambitious woman (Maggie Cheung), who migrated a little while earlier and is working multiple jobs in her desperate attempt to achieve economic stability. Initially, she's very dismissive of this bumpkin and tries to bilk him out of his dough to join an English class so that she can earn his commission. She learns English herself by washing the windows in the school and picking up what she can on the job -- in her off-hours from working at her main job at McDonalds.

Over time though, they become friends, and a friendship develops -- almost a love story, as the title suggests. But her desire for economic stability continues to get in the way of their potential romance.

The soundtrack of the film consists of the songs of the wonderful Teresa Teng -- an Asian icon who was enormous in Communist China during the first flowerings of that country being opened up during the early 80's post Tiennaman Square, etc. If you've ever seen Nick Broomfield's film, Ghosts, a dramatized account of a woman who comes to the UK to work and ends up getting caught in the Morecambe Bay cockle picking disaster, the songs that the mainlanders sing at their parties and when they're trying to relax tend to be the songs of Teresa Teng. You'll have heard them in a million cheap Chinese restaurants, and thought 'what's that terrible racket?', but after watching this film, I don't believe anyone could avoid getting her sentimental romantic ballads under their skin -- despite having no clue what it is that she's singing about.

The other interesting thing -- to me at least -- about Comrades, is that the director, Peter Chan, is married to my absolute favourite of all the Asian actresses, Sandra Ng. Sandra Ng is worth a whole blog post of her own, so I won't go dwell on her career here, but I will say that I'm very jealous of this director as he's married to one of the funniest, nicest, most talented actresses in the whole of Asia.

But if you're looking for an introduction to Hong Kong cinema, and you want something a little bit different from the traditional Chop-Sockey Kung Fu, the Johnnie To/Infernal Affairs style triad drama, or the Stephen Chow, Lunar New Year madcap comedy, then you can't go far wrong than seeking out Comrades, Almost A Love Story.

YouTube clip from Comrades