Mei gaau siu lui

Strong theme, portrayed in a light and colorful way, as all adolescence should be, but here we have underage prostitution, abandonment, murder, drugs, using a chat app as the main connection between the characters, friendship uniting the girls , beautiful, visually beautiful, alternating vibrant colors and a yellowish darkness, penumbra of the violence of the world...

Given my passion and love for the Asian cinema, and especially Hong Kong cinema, then I needed no persuasion in order to sit down and watch "May We Chat" (aka "Mei Gaau Siu Nui") from directors Philip Yung and Cheuk Man Au.

I happened to stumble upon "May We Chat" while perusing the Asian selection of movies on Netflix. And not being familiar with the movie or the people starring in it, I did of course have to watch it.

I almost made it to the end. I think I had 15 minutes left or so by the time I threw the towel in the ring and gave up. This movie was pointless to the point where it was dangerously close to becoming torture.

The movie has no proper story, and just revolve around 3 pointless characters whom have a serious problem with addiction to mobile devices and chats. And what is entertaining about that? The writers tried to throw in a story arch about a girl gone missing, to spice up the fact that we were just following the pointless stories of three equally pointless characters. Did it work? No!

The production level of the movie was good, but that was about all that the movie had working for it. Everything else was subpar. The storyline was abysmal, the characters were one dimensional cardboard cut outs, and the movie just felt like it was playing for 5 hours, as nothing of any worth happened throughout the course of the movie.

It should be said that the acting in the movie was adequate, just a shame that the actresses had little to absolutely nothing to work with in terms of script, storyline and dialogue.

This was a huge swing and miss in the Hong Kong cinema, and it is not a movie that will shine as being one of outstanding importance in the Hong Kong cinema. And I have no intention of returning to finish the last 15 minutes that I have remaining, because I just didn't care about the storyline or the characters in any way.

There are films that paint the bumpy road we take through youth as a time of discovery and magic, despite - or perhaps, oddly, because of - all the hormones and existential angst that come with it. Notwithstanding its chirpy, colour-splashed publicity campaign, May We Chat is not one of those films. Instead, filtered through the ultra-hip prism of popular Chinese social networking app WeChat, it explores the grim, bitter realities faced by kids struggling to survive in a seedy, hopeless modern-day Hong Kong. But, although writer-director Philip Yung's sophomore effort clearly wants to say a lot about society, it winds up descending into bleak torture porn and is, as a result, curiously devoid of emotional power and meaning.

The film follows three girls who have befriended one another on WeChat, but have never met in person. There's Yan (Kabby Hui), the spoilt rich girl who wanders aimlessly through life and one casual sexual encounter after another. We also meet Wai (Heidi Lee), a spirited girl trying to take care of her drug-addled mother and younger sister; and Chiu (Rainky Wai), a deaf-mute girl who lives with her grandmother and earns cash on the side as a hooker. When Yan mysteriously vanishes after a suicide attempt, Wai and Chiu finally meet in person to try and track her down.

It's impossible to deny Yung's ambition: he weaves an almost epic collision of character and circumstance into his script. We find out more about each member of the trio: Yan's tale is coloured in via sombre flashbacks to her unhappy past as a child of divorce and remarriage, while Wai and Chiu struggle to make ends meet even as their quest to find their friend plunges them ever deeper into the crime and grime of Hong Kong's underworld. This allows Yung to conjure up moments both shocking and chilling, largely involving Chiu as she makes the ultimate - and most horrific - sacrifice to get a lead as to Yan's whereabouts.

Yung even hints at the cyclical nature of lost youth and tragic violence by closely tying his film to Lovely Fifteen, a 1983 movie that examined in bleak detail the easy degeneracy of those who are barely older than children, but eager to believe themselves adults. In fact, Yung brings in two actors from that older film - Irene Wan and Peter Mak - to play older versions of themselves in May We Chat. Wan, as Yan's mother, and Mak, as a gangster turned kindly pimp, provide a tremulous link to an era gone by, even as each tries to deal with the new ways in which youths interact in this present.

But, smart and hip as it all is, May We Chat is also an oddly unemotional, almost clinical beast of a film. The story lines intersect in confusing and frustrating ways, cutting back and forth across time, with the overall plot never really seeming to make much sense - even though, once you've pieced it together, it's actually frightfully simple. It's tough, too, to form much of an emotional connection to any of Yung's lead characters. In effect, we are told how we should feel about each character, but never really feel it for ourselves. This has little to do with his cast: they're all surprisingly competent for newcomers, particularly Wai, who does a lot with very little - we never see where all the money she gets from prostituting herself goes, since her grandmother never seems to benefit from it.

It doesn't help that the final act of the film descends into a cold pit of torture porn. Yung ratchets up the violence to alarming degrees, without ever grounding it in something more real or emotional. There's an odd emptiness to the way in which his camera lingers almost horrifyingly on Chiu's bruised face, or Yan's mascara-scarred cheek, in the aftermath of some explosive act of violence. Wai's final emotional outburst, after weeks of tense searching for Yan, feels less truthful than callous.

That is, perhaps, Yung's point. The world is bleak, society is grim, and the few friends we make never really understood us at all. Wash, rinse, repeat. It certainly captures the zeitgeist of a world now moderated, shaped and broken apart by social networking, but May We Chat ultimately fails to connect: both as a coherent piece in and of itself, and with audiences. It may be smart, and it may be ambitious - but it's also hollow, and not entirely convincing as either thriller or social commentary.

If you haven't yet heard of the social messaging app 'WeChat', then the context of this movie might seem foreign to you. The rage among teenagers and young adults today, it allows the user to chat up random strangers, meet new people and of course engage in casual dating. But for all its wonders of making the world a smaller place by pulling individuals closer together, the app from which the movie's title derives from clearly has its pitfalls - and it is this which director and co-writer Philip Yung's sophomore film attempts to explore.

Intended as a cautionary tale, Yung begins by introducing his audience to the three lead female protagonists. Yan (Kabby Hui) comes from a rich background, but chooses to rebel against her absentee mother (Irene Wan) by partying hard, experimenting with drugs and sleeping around with boys she meets through WeChat. On that app, Yan happens to be in the same chat group as the deaf-mute Yee-gee (Rainky Wai) who lives with her grandmother and does tricks for cash on the side - which is given the politically correct term of 'compensated dating'. Last but not least is Wai-wai (Heidi Lee), whose mother is a drug addict and therefore has to assume the responsibility of caring for her younger sister.

Can you say it's a hard life? Yung's focus is on the disfranchised and marginalised youth of our society, whose tendencies and excesses are exacerbated by the unfettered use of social media. Before pleading caution, Yung though gets his audience immersed into this microcosm of the modern teen world. Yan, Yee-gee and Wai-wai's lively interactions appear alongside each other in split screens. Their texts also pop up on screen in gaudy speech-bubble fashion, complete with emoticons and avatars. Together with some sharp outdoor lensing by Shi Yue, the effect is a busy, colourful and captivating visual palette that seems to count towards a bright and breezy teen flick.

But as they say, things go downhill really quickly. The trigger for this is Yan's disappearance, following news that she was rescued in spectacular fashion after she had attempted suicide by jumping off the roof of a building. Yee-gee and Wai-wai team up to track her down, as it only becomes clear that the three WeChat group mates had in fact never met with each other in real-life. Nevertheless, the app proves a blessing in disguise, enabling the pair to work through friends, enemies and acquaintances that mostly also belong on the sidelines, including prostitutes, hoodlums, and pimps.

Even if we can ignore the disjointed way in which scenes are pieced together in seemingly haphazard fashion, we cannot quite brush aside the fact that Yung's film fails to rise above low-budget exploitation fare in the second half. Aiming for maximum shock value, he depicts with surprisingly graphicness a brutal killing (complete with a shot of full- frontal male nudity that is we warn you not pretty at all) and two separate rape sequences that carry more than a whiff of sadism. Unfortunately for Yung, he doesn't shoot with enough restraint for these scenes of extreme violence to rise above shlock, and his own tendency for melodrama also further undermines the seriousness of the subject matter to which his film tries to serve fair warning of.

He does however regain some respectability by referencing an earlier cultural touchstone in Hong Kong cinema, the gritty 1982 teen film 'Lonely Fifteen'. Those who are familiar with it will immediately recognise that film's stars Irene Wan and Peter Mak in supporting roles here, the former playing Yan's mother and the latter a close friend cum former triad boss whom Yan's mother reaches out for help to locate her daughter. Their appearances are not only preceded by grainy film clips of their younger selves in 'Lonely Fifteen', but also by relevant sections showing the surprisingly relevant parallel between adolescent rebellion then and now.

Yung must also be thankful that he has found a fearless group of female performers. The roles aren't easy in and of themselves, but certain scenes in particular require a certain confidence that these three leads gamely step up to. On the other hand, the script accords the male actors very little to do except be bastards, and even if the sympathy for the girls is artificially manufactured from the script's contrivances, there's no denying you'll still feel a fair degree of indignation for them.

Still, we suspect that 'May We Chat' is likely to get a fairly polarised reaction. You'll either hate it for being plainly manipulative and amateurishly made, or you'll give it its fair due for attempting to tackle a timely and important subject even though it does so in a plainly manipulative and amateurish fashion. If only Yung were a better filmmaker, this may have been better social commentary; as it is, its intentions are good but its execution far less so.