leekandham

Ageing cook, Wan (Fuji Tatsuya) is the chef-owner a popular local Chinese restaurant called Little Shanghai. Cooking his favourite dishes from his native Shaoxing in China, his restaurant is favourite with the regular locals which beings it to the attention attention of a department store, who wants to create a range of dishes for retail.

Their rep, widowed mother Takako (Nakatani Miki), is sent to visit Wan, but she is unable to convince him to do a deal. Persistently visiting his restaurant she tries each of the dishes and falls in love with the restaurant, whilst uncovering her own desire to learn how to cook for herself. When Wan suffers a stroke and the restaurant is threatened with closure, Takako quits her job and offers to be Wan's apprentice. Reluctant at first, Wan finally accepts, and Takako's major task is to impress some very important clients.

Admittedly not the most original plot (we've had "apprentice" story lines stretching from dance/music/singing/office/fashion students as far as you can get), this one does provides a nice twist on the idea. Not just focusing on the usual apprentice-will-succeed story, director Mihara Mitsuhiro focuses on exploring the senses. Of course, we could have done with a bit of smelly-vision and tasting the food, but being a film Mihara does his best by taking us also on a beautiful visual and aural journey, not only in the kitchen, but to different parts of Japan and Shaoxing in China as well. In many ways this is as much a cultural eye-opener as a culinary one.

The backgrounds to the characters provide for some neat and touching moments throughout the movie, and the chemistry between the actors is excellent, all brought together to complement Miharo's story and direction.

For me this was one very delightful film, tickling all my senses of pleasure, and I would be happy to revisit this establishment again any time.

A movie to celebrate 10 years since the handover of Hong Kong, this film aims to document the difficulties Hong Kong faced immediately, from the Asian financial crisis in the late 90s to SARS.

Gigi Leung plays Joy, a powerful CFO of a hotel chain in Hong Kong, who sees her husband CEO replaced by a young mainland Chinese businessman. As the Asian financial crisis hits, relationships are strained and even the most trusted ones, both personal and business, are troubled.

Meanwhile, Fiona Sit plays the naïve assistant of Joy, falls for a cheat, yet has an admirer in the form of the flower shop boy next door.

In all honesty, the film fell into the typical trap in converting a novel into a motion picture. There are too many minor dramatic scenes that might work in describing real life in a novel, but simply doesn't add anything to a film lasting an hour and a half. The relationships between the characters seem too artificial, despite glimmers of chemistry amongst some of the actors, but generally, it just didn't work.

But my greatest gripe was that this film just relied so heavily on product placement such that it turned out to be one long advertisement. I understand that films need funding, but that just ruined any artistic value this film had (not that it really had much to start with).

I'm rather disappointed overall. Gigi Leung has proved that she can be a good dramatic actress, but sadly, her talent was wasted this time.

A Melody Looking

Starring: Janice Vidal, Leon Lai, Jill Vidal, Charles Ying, Chapman To, Emily Wong

Dir: Leon Lai - 2006 - Hong Kong

There has been a small buzz in musical films recently. Sure the likes of Evita, The Producers and Chicago may be been a follow on from a century of musical cinema in the US, but in Hong Kong, musical films are a rarity. But with the success of the likes of Peter Chan's Perhaps Love, and Jacky Cheung's ultra-successful stage show, Snow.Wolf.Lake, it's no surprise that some of the others might want to step up to the challenge.

A Melody Looking is a story in which a young girl recruits two quirky sleuths, Leon (Leon Lai) and Charles (Charles Ying), to track down a girl called Janice (Janice Vidal), only to instead find Janice's twin sister Jill (Jill Vidal). It turns out that Janice is needed as she had written a song to help a ghost reincarnate herself in the next life.

Leon Lai and Mark Lui are one of the most successful recording partnerships in Hong Kong, and this film was clearly one to showcase the talent they have at their music label Amusic. From veterans Lai and Chapman To, to newcomers Janice, who was the new sensation in 2005 and followed quickly by real life twin Jill, as a video showcase, it works quite well. But sadly anyone looking for more than this, including pop fans of the artists, is going to be disappointed.

The story is particularly weak, not surprisingly, particularly as there isn't much dialogue in between each of the full length music video segments that take place in between the different scenes. In fact the music videos are the major flaw in the film. There are too many of them, and there's little interesting content in them to keep the viewer occupied. Where, usually, in a musical, each song tells a story and the visual element carries you along, the MVs in this film don't. Indeed, even as standalone music videos they look rather boring. A couple of Janice's standalone MVs on her latest album are just based on one camera moving back and forth on a track pointing at her. Rather dull.

It is a shame, though. Where there was good, it was very good. The costumes, the sets, and even some of the camera angles were gorgeous and visually grand. Unfortunately, it's just not put together well enough to make it stick.

All in all, I'm rather disappointed in this effort. For a film that reportedly cost HK$10m to make (a lot by HK standards), I doubt that it was really worth it. Perhaps next time, they could have taken some of the commercialism out of it and tried to make a real story.