Historically, only action films have seduced critics. So,
the disdain for HK comedies has fed without difficulties on the drawbacks of these
demagogue and consensual movies, made to seduce a wide audience.
After
the local audience loss of interest for action movies, a page of the HK film history was
definitively turned. Marginalized, such films have become exportation products usually
financed by foreign investors or made abroad with some exiled directors, actors or
choreographs. In HK, the local cinema carries on and still leans on formulas and stars,
except for the fact that comedy is practically the only exploited genre at the moment.
There's still a few 'psycho-horror' movies (Visible Secret, The Eye, Inner
Senses…) and some cheap action B-movies though.
Moviegoers have actually changed a lot. Far from the 1997
handover fear, they now are mainly worrying about the actual economic crisis. In this
respect, cinema has become a mean to relax in order to forget daily problems. "According
to the marketing research in HK nowadays comedies is the most popular genre.":
said actress Miriam Yeung of the movies Love Undercover and Dry Wood Fierce
Fire fame. "That's why so many comedies come out in HK. I think that may be
this is due to the atmosphere in HK." (see her interview at the 2002 Far East
Festival)
As for the cinema of genre, Hong Kong people prefer to go
and see American movies that pretty much outdo local films on the production value front
(except for a handful of movies such as Infernal Affairs or Shaolin Soccer
for instance). Romantic comedy is then the temporary solution found by local producers.
This genre allows them to propose alternative choices before American blockbusters and to
keep on providing locals with their entertainement dose. The romantic aspect of such
movies permits also to attract a female audience willing to go to theatres to watch this
kind of films.
The romantic comedy genre is obviously not new.
About ten years ago, C'est La Vie Mon Cherie was a hit at the box office and showed
that such genre was a good investment. The current recipe for a good romantic comedy has
however changed to adapt to the recent HK society changes. Today, the heroes of such
comedies are young bourgeois (or even yuppies) working in the last technology
fields. They own nice car and gorgeous houses. We are now far from the working-class
characters that were once used to be in the very centre of such films. Where is then the
manual worker portrayed by Chow Yun Fat in All About Ah Long ? What about the
penniless musicians from C'est La Vie Mon Cherie, or the young lady from a modest
background in He's a Woman, She's a Man ?
Themes of the economic survival or love between two persons
from different backgrounds are probably no longer reflecting the current situation in HK,
or at least not appealing enough for nowadays audience tastes. Although the economic
pressure isn't absent from current movies, it generally doesn't constitute a main theme.
In Johnnie To's Needing You, the female lead helps the man she loves to achieve an
important professional project. The working place is first a meeting place for future
couples and professional activities are a mean to construct the couple.
Male characters in romantic comedies have however not
changed much. The hero is as dull as in the past. He's handsome and generally appears
inaccessible, at least in the beginning, because he's a known womanizer (Needing You),
or because he's famous (Dry Wood Fierce Fire) or because he's simply a gangster (Love
Undercover). He doesn't have a lot to do since the heart of the woman already belongs
to him. He just has to realise that he loves her too. But it takes at least an hour into
the movie for the poor boy to be aware of this fact and to do two or three things to show
his love.
Female characters are more developed and are written to let
the female audience identify with them. In this respect, they usually aren't
extraordinarily beautiful, the actress beauty is sometimes even 'casual'. Her
attractiveness usually comes from her spontaneity and her freshness. Sammy Cheng and
Miriam Yeung have been very good at perpetuating this type of woman so far, as Anita Yuen
and Charlie Young did in the nineties. The recipe to make a touching character is always
the same. Each time, the heroine has an extravagant or a witty side. In Needing You,
Sammi Cheng cleans everything whenever she is stressed, in My Wife is 18, Charlene
Choi is an over-exited and expansive young lady that keeps jumping around, and in Love
Undercover, Miriam Yeung is very clumsy and goofy. Such feature gives the heroine a
comic, sympathetic and above all a human dimension.
In movies mainly targeting at the female audience, the
director's point is very conventional. Even if they work and are financially independent,
women in the HK comedies are largely subordinate to men and still play the
housewife-at-the-male's-service role. The cleaning extravaganza of Sammi Cheng in Needing
You sends the weaker sex back to household chores. Cheng assists Andy Lau in his job
and helps him to achieve his goal, the woman is at the man's service. Director Johnnie
To's misogyny isn't enough to explain this kind of scene. Director Wilson Yip isn't better
in Dry Wood Fierce Fire since the female lead helps the man she loves to refurbish
his home and even cooks for him. All these movies remain therefore very conservative in
the depiction of relationships between men and women, and the formation of the couple.
If the woman depiction is still root into retrograde
clichés, the romance presentation doesn't belong anymore to a sentimental storytelling
tradition where each stage of the relationship is dealt with a naive romanticism. It's
undoubtedly worth considering the Hong Kong mentality at this stage. Such mentality
consists in standing back from things of life with a good sense of cynicism. That why
heroes and big romantic scenes in HK love stories are usually held up to ridicule. In this
respect, Dry Wood Fierce Fire goes very far. The first glance between the lovers
drives the lady to unintentionally hit a window with her head, breaking it into pieces.
After a shot, reverse shot pattern on slow motion with a nice melody, the outcome of this
largely parodied romantic cliché of love at first sight, is a woman screaming in pain.
She ends up having a fit of sneezing and staining the man's trousers with blood from her
nose. This type of scenes shows the cynicism and distance adopted by directors before a
stereotyped love situation occurs.
On the other hand, it's not only a mere parody of a love
story. Comedy situations usually lead to intimate sequences. The music score becomes then
softer and the exaggeration of romantic clichés, such as shot/reverse shot patterns, wind
in the hair and actors posing, vanishes. The main goal seems to stay between derision and
seriousness. As soon as the film takes a ludicrous turn, seriousness is back. But derision
appears just after a solemn moment in order to avoid the film to take itself too
seriously. It is in this perpetual balance between seriousness and derision that one can
find what is the spirit of the Hong Kong cinema, and by means of it a side of the local
state of mind.
Last economic resort of the HK film industry, the romantic
comedy hasn't found a true subversive and bold director able to bend the rules of the
genre. Trapped by conventions, directors have always hold to a formula that certainly does
show the peculiar HK mentality, but that stays far too stereotyped and demagogue for the
essential stakes of the theme dealt with, i.e. Love…
