Boon chui yan gaan

New movie Cocktail stars rising Hong Kong singers Candy Lo, Endy Chow, Race Wong (of 2R), Bobo Chan, etc. Lawrence Cheng, an all-rounder in the entertainment industry, and Eric Kot of former Soft Hard Kids, each take up a role. Cocktail, as the movie title suggests, evolves around a pub where people fall in love and break up with one another. It interweaves six love stories to explore the mixed tastes of people's bittersweet lives, just like cocktail mixing different liquors. Director Herman Yau has made over 70 movies in Hong Kong (such as Master Q 2001, The Untold Story), and in this refreshing title he offers a collage of episodes from urban youngsters' experiences.

Paul (Endy Chow) wants to know more about his alcoholic father (Lawrence Cheng) only after he has passed away. Having hated alcohol for almost twenty years, he surprisingly applies for a bartender job at Candy's pub, for drinking now seems the only way for Paul to connect with his late dad. Pub owner Candy (Candy Lo) is born to a rich family. She resorts to drinking when her father forbids her romance with her cousin (Eric Kot), and decides to run a pub so that she can turn her habit to a business. Paul soon has a crush on a customer, without knowing that his colleague Stella (Race Wong@2R) is deeply in love with him...

Cultural relativity can be such a funny thing. What's trivial in one place can be all the rage in another, and somebody's taboo often ends up someone else's hot ticket for the day.

But HK stands unique in its ability to transform items considered par for the course everywhere into sensational material for the masses, and the nightlife has long been one of these topics.

For those with functioning memories, the years just before and after the turn of the millennium bring back flashes of rave movies, hair tossing, and Fing pills overflowing from glass jars. Now those were the days, and they're still here apparently because going out for a drink works yet in Hong Kong as viable subject matter for a movie.

Not so long ago Drink Drank Drunk came out to good results, but that one was more of a serious comedy and certainly enjoyed the kind of production Cocktail lacks. By the way, Cocktail itself has nothing to do with Tom Cruise or his newly arrived offspring, so don't get your hopes up. And while the 80's US flick for its part shied away from the liquor per se, this current release does focus more on the bottled ones, with characters looking almost as cool as Starship Enterprise crewmembers in that bar they had, the one where glasses fizzled and gave off odd puffs of blue smoke.

So, drinking and bars are still being touted as something forbidden and tantalizing. Strange but manageable as pretext for telling a bigger tale, if one exists. That's not always the case with Cocktail, where although watchability isn't too big of a problem, it surely doesn't rank among the cream of the crop either.

At the story's core is one local dive, known alternately as Heaven and Hell or Half-Mortal, take your pick as the people subtitling this DVD couldn't. The place's run by Candy (awesome rocker and comedienne Candy Lo), a shadowy figure with a heart of gold and everlasting desire to forget via imbibing alcohol and maybe a few other substances. Candy's bar has a minor reputation for attracting oddball individuals and cheap drinkers, for the boss, when particularly disheartened, freely announced happy hours where everything's on the house.

Enter all this rookie bartender Paul (Endy Chow), a natural with a keen eye for customizing mixes tailored to people's personalities. He almost immediately builds himself a following, not least of which is co-pourer Stella (Race Wong). The latter instantly takes to Paul and wants to make him her better half, but as usually happens after hours, there's competition in the form of sultry Yuki, a broken young lady done by Chloe Chiu.

Paul juggles not only these relationship problems, but also several troubling clients and their pursuant issues, like car sales mogul Michael (Johnson Lee), who's big into abusing subordinates and anyone else that comes along.

There's essentially no impetus to the plot in Cocktail, a brave move in view of its sparse settings and short breadth. Unlike other bar movies, it purposefully zeroes in on a specific location and group of people, eschewing atmosphere-building or a sense of context within a place and subculture. You get the impression they didn't want to address HK's nightlife as a whole, and as a consequence this film could actually be set anywhere.

The main content highlight in Cocktail, therefore, must be its emphasis on Paul's regret and pain over his alcoholic father's death from liver failure. There's a plethora of mental recollections from Paul explaining their problematic, but ultimately loving, relationship, and we receive a powerful rendition of just how hurt he is in the wake of his father's passing. Overall, good input from relatively inexperienced Endy Chow, and probably the only real reason Cocktail is worth sitting down to watch.

For sure, modest plugging of Blue Girl beer and having only negatively-portrayed characters smoke aren't compelling incentives to spend an hour and a half with this release. There have been numerous other nightlife and bar movies set in HK, Taiwan and China over the years, and this obviously isn't the best of them, but it's an enjoyable mixture of story and emotion, and doesn't leave a bitter after taste, which often is good enough.

Rating * * *

Refreshingly good! Cocktail, who doesn't want to drink one? Personally Neo love the sky blue one, but why? Perhaps it is the colour, the taste, but ultimately it is the feel that it provides - it is me! Drinking is a part of social norm, and most reasonable people will not be against it, but drinking for the sake of being drunk is another story. While I have never been drunk "drunk" before, but behind every drunken stranger there lies a reason for its occurrence - wanting to forget, to be cool, love, depression, just for the sake of it. Whatever reason it may be, alcohol does provides a temporary escape route and as unethical as the following line is going to be - being drunk isn't necessary a bad thing as there is always a hidden story behind each one of them. Cocktail is a surprisingly good entry into a rarely dealt with genre that is both fascinating and complexly simple in an absolute refreshing manner.

Rarely are HK movies refreshing nowadays and refreshingly good ones are as rare as a crystal gem. Perhaps the main reasons why there are so many drinkers around is largely associated to the simple yet complicated word - memories. Sometimes you wonder whether you can just erase a memory from your brain or hoping that the next morning you woke up a section of your brain becomes empty, but then you began to pitch yourself and realise that you are just being stupid. As forgetful Neo is, memories of the past keep flashing back - good times and bad times and not so good/bad times. These are times when all you want to do is refresh yourself by drinking a bit and usually a cocktail that defines you - life is like a cocktail - sweet, bitter, salty all mixed together. The result is what shape and defines you today. Herman Yau is a damn realistic director and he is one who can deliver a truly engaging movie with an ever low budget. His movies are ever relevant and appeals to a variety of audience and really Cocktail glued me to the screen for the entire duration.

Endy Chow is a new kid on the circuit, and his portrayal of seemingly cool bartender with a hidden past is extremely convincing and at times engaging. While his emotional range is entirely questionable, fortunately he is able to drive the movie in an extremely adequate manner. His final understanding of the real reasons behind why his father constantly drink is emotionally bonding and the result is a heart felt understanding. Candy Lo is now a staple Yau's movie star and while her character remains all the more mysterious than realising, her performance is one of experience and class. While this isn't her best performance, but her coldness works to an engaging process. Race Wong continue to shines and after a huge career misstep with China's Next Top Princesses - here Wong redeems her self and more importantly played her role into a believable character.

Being in bar or working at a bar in Neo's personal experience, is very much a definition of my life - people come and go - some stay, some come back again and some I will never see again. Aspects of life, reasons for drinking and the beauty of life within a cocktail are all stuff that this film tries to express. This isn't an outright terrific film, but it is absolutely engrossing and ultimately a timely yet touching finale. People drink for their own reasons and whether we like it or not, we have to learn to respect their reasons behind each drink. Cocktail is a heck of a beautiful little film and in the process there is a definite "feel good" factor associated to it. Ultimately the film reinforces the fact that Neo loves drinking and in other words, I feel like a Cocktail tonight...

I rate it 9/10

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