It’s a little difficult to tell if this is a Hong Kong film or a China one, but perhaps the point is that these days there is no real difference. It is the debut feature of its director Xiao Bai who is a mainlander but this film is shockingly good at capturing life in Hong Kong. Unfortunately the way it rushes towards an ending that feels at odds with the rest of the film has all of the signs of government interference and suggests that this isn’t the kind of ending the director would have chosen if left to her own devices.
Pei Pei is a 16-year old girl with a Hong Kong identity card and goes to school in school but actually lives across the border with her mother in Shenzen. Her best friend Jo comes from a wealthy family and they dream of going on holiday together to Japan. Pei Pei’s own family is of more modest means however and we see that her father in Hong Kong lives in a container. To raise the money she needs, Pei Pei tries some part time jobs but the cash only really starts rolling in when she falls in with a smuggling ring that Jo’s boyfriend Hao is involved in. The gang smuggles iPhones across the border and Pei Pei is a natural fit for the job given that she crosses the border every day. She proves to be an exceptionally diligent worker as she is grateful for the chance to earn money. But this also leads her to take greater risks and grow closer to Hao.
As my wife noted, Hong Kong has few world-class directors these days so it is startling to come across a film that does such a fantastic job at portraying street-level life in the city state. This film uses handheld cameras to achieve a realistic, intimate look that works very well at capturing the energy of the city. The characters and the actors who play them are excellent and I really love how Pei Pei’s living situation is an apt reflection of the mixed identities of the current reality. It’s unfortunate that the film is so reluctant to do much exposition but there are enough details in here for us to infer what is unsaid. Pei Pei’s father has a real family of his own in Hong Kong and her China mother is a mistress. She despises her mother, seems happiest in Hong Kong and trusts in money to buy herself freedom. The scene where she accidentally damages a phone and so distraught about is positively endearing, as even the others look on with bemusement. She actually has little in common with her rich friend and shares more of a kindred spirit with Hao who has a similarly entrepreneurial bent.
Unfortunately all this seems to be moving in a direction that would definitely not be approved by the Chinese government and so all this is amended at the last moment. The gang of smugglers are caught and brought to justice. Pei Pei realizes that her China mother is the one who really loves her after all and her Hong Kong father is unreliable. No more mention is made of travelling to Japan. It’s not that these plot developments are bad necessarily. It’s that the film has not previously invested the time into laying the foundations for this particular ending We had no previous character development scenes involving her mother at all for example. To make things worse, a notice appears immediately after the police crackdown to explain that the authorities have gotten much better at catching this kind of smuggling. It’s such a blatant intrusion that it feels almost like a kind of protest, as if the director were saying that this wouldn’t be the ending she would have chosen if she had completely free rein.
Despite the extremely disappointing ending, this remains a good enough film that I would recommend it. It’s portrayal of Hong Kong really is that vivid and it proves how rich the subject of exploring a mixed China and Hong Kong identity can be. Unfortunately this topic will never be fairly presented under the current governing structure and this film reveals that however talented Chinese artists and creators are, the quality of the art they are able to produce is being held back by the need to toe the government line.