Mr. Cinema by Samson Chiu Leung Chun (2007)
6 November 2007A decent enough little love story, that purports to follow 40 years of Hong Kong history as seen by a die hard communist sympathizer, and it’s effects on his family who are best friends with some Taiwanese who have diametrically opposed viewpoints. It is cute, and comes out as a nice love story, but it is pretty cursory in it’s history. At least it does show some of the downsides that happen to his family for all his devotion to the people, but still it does come to a too pat ending from it. Certainly a film targeted at a Mainland audience, and at getting through the Chinese censor board. And this one certainly seems to follow a similar formula to Chiu’s Golden Chicken films, with their telling of Hong Kong history through the skewed eyes of one of the protagonists.
Anthony Wong Chau Sand plays Zhou (Left) a pro-communist idealist in Hong Kong who works as a projectionist showing only mainland cinema fair. Zhou loves communism and it’s for the people attitude, which means he will give everything away, and not think about his family, who live with him in a broken down place on a rooftop, surrounded by TV antennae and wires. He very much loves his wife Ying (Teresa Mo Sun Kwan) who always wants more, but always is resigned to her husband giving everything away, and doing more for his communist buddies than he does for his family. Zhou also always wants to go to Tianamen, but is always giving the money away so it will never happen. They also have a son Chong (Ronald Cheng Chun Kei when he grows up) who doesn’t do much, not liking school, and wanting to make money, but not too smart about it. Zhou gives everything to his leftist buddies, but their real best friends are the Taiwanese family that move in next door, and the father works at the snack shop in front of the theater, and the daughter Min (Karen Mok Man Wai when she grows up) is always Chong’s love, but he never does anything about, even when the family moves to better place, and she goes away to America for college, even missing her leaving because he is always late.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
(I LOVE THE POSTER CAMPAIGN THAT LOOKS LIKE OLD COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA POSTERS)
Zhou never thinks of his family, and when one of his leftist friends dies he gives HK 80,000 to the son (Andrew Lin Hoi) so he can get an education, not thinking about getting a new house for his family, nor helping his son with money, and his son just lost a lot in a business and could use the money. And when Min comes back to town, Chong instead of telling her his feelings borrows her money, even though she earned it dishwashing while going to school. Eventually Ying has had too much, and wants a new place, so she and her friend start working cleaning and cooking for other people to save money, but she is sick, and she works until she dies.
The death does bring CHong and Zhou a bit closer though, especially when they read her letter she wrote to them just before she dies.
Chong then sees Min pregnant, and is crushed, but when she ends up in the hospital, he is the one by her side, while the man has long ago left her, and he is there when she loses the baby, and will stay with her, because they love each other and always have.
Eventually the son who was given the money returns a success, and not only returns the money with interest, but gives Chong a job, and Chong takes Min with him to also get work in the mainland, and he gets his father a job working as a volunteer at the Beijing Olympics, so he can finally see Tianamen.
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Cute, but not amazing, though I do like how the love story works out at the end, and was rocky for so long.
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