Heung Gong jai jo

One of the best films of last decade. Impressive visual style, especially cinematography and production design, despite ultra low budget. Deep emotional touch, very special atmosphere, captivating cast, simply beautiful film. This young author (director and writer) did it only with money from his cousins, friends and support from senior Hong kong moviemakers. Enthusiasm above all and remarkable accomplishment is here.

Decently directed and with a good script, with bitter-sweet description of the life in HK in late 1990s, elements of violence and brutality mixed with the sweetness of young friendship and love. The music choices are so so though, the soundtrack could be much better, but what can one expect with such a tiny budget. Considering it cost only about 80k USD, the film is phenomenal. Could become a cult classic with a wider distribution.

Fruit Chan's debut film was seen by many in Hong Kong as a metaphor for the foreboding that gripped the colony in the years before 1997, and Chan himself has said that it is the first part of a trilogy on the handover--the second part is "The Longest Night." Metaphorical resonances aside, though, under the energetic, sometimes violent surface of "Made in China" is a film of haunting sadness and compassion. The central character, the young, jobless Autumn Moon, is proud of his ability to live by his wits; but he ends up in a world that his wits can't handle. Chan's ingenuity in making this film on a tiny budget with amateur actors is obvious, but one leaves the film overwhelmed with sadness for the lives of the characters--most of all Autumn Moon's, and his despairing inability to help the people he cares about.

At least two famous film critics retired at a time when they felt they were no longer in step with new cinema. One was a much revered Sunday newspaper journalist in the UK who saw the writing on the wall when she could only register her loathing for "Psycho". Although I am not a professional critic and simply like to impart enthusiasm rather than condemnations through this website, I sometimes wonder if I am out of step with what a much younger generation of audiences admire. I have all but ceased going to the commercial cinema where nine out of ten offerings seem to be mindless kids' fodder delivered at a painfully high decibel level. Far too often those that my peergroup recommend, "0negin" or "The House of Mirth" for example, I find to be dreary and portentous. And so I sit through endless art house movies, many of them enervating in the extreme, just for that wonderful sense of discovery when something like "La Promesse" from Belgium or "After Life" from Japan occurs. However, I had a sobering experience the other day which has warned me not to be too dismissive of "youth appeal" films when I saw "Made in Hong Kong". First impressions were dreadful, slapdash hand-held camera stuff, washed out colours, tempo continuously at feverpitch and a plot I could barely follow - the last factor is something I recognise as a personal shortcoming if my interest is not initially aroused. I could not quite pinpoint at the time why I did not abandon there and then a film I was barely comprehending or why something afterwards tempted me to give it a second go. I was extremely glad I did as I think I achieved an insight into why such a film can work for young people. The three main characters are all so likeable. There is Moon the school dropout turned toughie, his sidekick a retard whom he protects called Sylvester and Ping the girl with a serious kidney disease whom they are both soft on. For all its violent rough cut trappings, "Made in Hong Kong" is an incredibly sentimental film about camaraderie of the "Kings Row" sort that my generation wallowed in and "Dead Poets Society" revered by the generation in between. It is that old "youth - death" thing all over again. My recognition and appreciation of this in a film initially as alien as "Made in Hong Kong" gives me hope that I can still keep in step.

Sluggish gangster genre revitalised by infusion of teen melodrama. One of the films of the year. The violence is, for once, sickening, immediate and real, rather than crude comedy, but interlaced with expressionistic sensibility of dead protagonist. Deeply moving on a personal level, and highly comic in spite of ultimate despair. The director's visual vocabulary is immense, with imagery of such dreamlike, poetic, evocative beauty, your heart stops.