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Six Flavors of Hong Kong

By Winghei Kwok

Wong Fu Productions' The One Days: HK impresses a nostalgic Hong Kong native who was successfully transported back to her hometown through their latest series of short films.

In the summer of 2007 and 2008, Wong Fu's Wesley Chan and Philip Wang toured Hong Kong and started a very ambitious project: to produce one short film in one day. Maybe it was the hectic production schedule or the fragmented nature of the shorts, but Wong Fu couldn't have chosen a better city to capture the transitory nature of time and relationships, than the bustling city of Hong Kong.

The six shorts from The One Days: HK are deliberately short and indefinite, enough to intrigue but never time to stop and explain. Like a casual conversation, like eye contact with a stranger, these stories offer a momentary glimpse into the lives of the characters, from which we learn about their hope, fear and love.

The series open with "Set Free," a simple uplifting piece featuring only Wesley Chan, a paper plane and the peaceful village of Lamma Island. The short has no plot: just a quote that reads "We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stopped playing." Thus, we are forewarned about the impermanence of youth. Little do we know that the very plane that was set free in this prologue keeps coming back.

In the heart of these shorts is a love story woven literally out of Hong Kong's transportation system. "The Spare" and "Dream Line" tell the story of a couple that is soon to be separated, as the boyfriend (Kinson Tam) is heading off to the US for art school. In "Dream Line," as the girlfriend (Helen Ma) explains, at a busy MTR station, that the MTR is a giant dream machine that carries millions of dreaming people, I couldn't help but notice the constant movement of the crowd around them and the passing of a train overhead. Filmed slightly out of focus from a lower angle, the scene reminds me of Wong Kar Wai's signature train shots in Fallen Angels and My Blueberry Nights. It is definitely a stretch to compare the two, but I would say Wong Fu did capture the spirit of the city though its generous use of neon-light-splattered street scenes.

One of the most remarkable scenes happens on the Star Ferry: the girl first learns of the separation to come when they are crossing the Victoria Harbor at sunset. The lighting is beautifully mastered, creating a classic romantic shot that successfully captures the bittersweet mood of a moment to remember, with the setting sun to remind us that such moments are short-lived. Using again transportation as metaphor, the boyfriend explains the reason he loves taking the ferry: "You always know where you are going, and it will always come back." The story closes with the couple falling asleep on each other's shoulders on the ferry as night begins to fall. The shot is interjected with clips of them falling asleep on the MTR, the giant Dream Machine where they first met, bringing the story to a full circle.

Besides the short and sweet storylines and remarkable filming, Wong Fu did a marvelous job casting the couple in these shorts. With limited time and resources, Wesley Chan filmed his friends Helen Ma and Kinson Tam, both amateur actors who surprised us all with their undeniable chemistry and natural delivery. Also worth mentioning is the decision to use Cantonese throughout. Watching the film as a native speaker, I didn't find the dialogue, which are translated from an originally English script, to be contrived or awkward at all. Instead, the Cantonese dialogue adds local flavor and makes the story much more convincing.

Starring Kinson Tam from "The Spare" against Thomas Wong as his Britain-educated brother, "Two True" talks about a boy's haphazard romance in traffic. Inspired by a traffic jam Wesley Chan experienced in his trip, the boy meets the girl when their buses keep passing each other on the road. The theme of a relationship in passing recurs again in this silly self-served romance told by a boy whose hope depends on a fake phone number from a beautiful stranger. The music compliments the innocence of this story with a electric guitar score that sounds a lot like Beyond, Hong Kong's one and only real rock band from the 80's. It might not be intentional, but the nostalgic tune brings back the pureness and childish desire one experiences when we stil believe in love at first sight.

References to Hong Kong films don't end with the train scenes; in the commentary, Wesley Chan explains that in "The Returning," the opening shot was inspired by Infernal Affairs, and one of the character's love interest May was named after Takeshi Kaneshiro's from Chungking Express. "The Returning" follows two pick pockets who eventually decide to return a wallet that they have stolen, and by doing so, return to what Wesley Chan believe, their inherit good nature.

The DVD concludes with Wesley's acting debut in "See Through." The story follows two tourists who were both nursing wounds from failing relationships. The strangers find comfort in each other's company and eventually part, having found a new understanding of themselves.

There were two very ambitious things Wong Fu did in this series of shorts. One of them was to shoot a short film, from the writing of script to the actual shooting, in no more than one day. The second ambitious thing was to film a series of shorts in a foreign city from a local perspective, while being Asian American themselves. I would have to say that even though I was impressed by the technical difficulty of the former, I was more impressed by the latter. As a Hong Kong native, I found myself feeling helplessly nostalgic watching these shorts. The characters sound and look like my friends, or people I would meet on the bus or the MTR. Like the girlfriend in "The Spare" says, "What is the chance to meet each other in a city with millions of people?" It was precisely the reason why the wondrously chaotic city of Hong Kong is so isolating and romantic at the same time. As strangers brush shoulders each day, we are amazed by the chance encounters and the fleeting relationships we've inevitably lost and found, as the city around us move on, unimpressed. I was particularly thankful for the seamless delivery of Cantonese dialogue and matter-of-factness of the story-telling. There was no exotic foreign city drama and there were no culture clash clichés. The One Days: HK was just about people in Hong Kong and their lives as they know it.

Date Posted: 2/20/2009