Reviews

Ann Hui, an internationally acclaimed Hong Kong director, is perhaps the closer soulmate to Mike Leigh in world cinema today. "The Way We Are" tells the story of a hardworking, good-hearted widow (Mrs. Cheung) who is living with his teenage son (Ka-on) in a housing estate in Tinshuiwai, a suburb regularly featured in the news for all the wrong reasons - family suicide packs, problem teens abusing drugs and massive unemployment.

At the start we see the two circling around in a tiny apartment with little communication, each trapped in their own worlds. Cheung works in the fruit counter in a supermarket, while Ka-on spends his summer vacation idling at home waiting for the results of his university entrance exam. Soon we are introduced to Cheung's extended family - then we learn that she spent her young adult life working hard in factories to support her two younger brothers, paid for their education and they've both since moved upward. But before she has her chance, her husband died and left her behind in a poor lower-class suburb.

Cheung soon befriends another widow, Granny, who's just moved in the same building. Granny has her grim tale - she was forced to live on her own after her only daughter died and her son-in-law remarried. Her grandson is now what remains of her "family", but he's sadly out of reach. She begins to imprison herself in her "single elderly" flat until Cheung slowly reaches out to her.

Then the somber tone of the story takes on an optimistic note. Cheung, ever so nurturing, takes Granny in and they soon bond to form their own support network. We also learn that Ka-on, despite the ear-ring and dyed hair, has inherited the strong, resilient and optimistic personality of his mother, ready and able to take up responsibilities to keep his little family together.

The relationship between Cheung and her brothers is also not as remote as it is suggested earlier in the film. While they're no longer as close and the brothers still put their own families before all else, they're here to help Cheung and Ka-on and willing to pay her back by promising to send Ka-on to study overseas if he should fail his exam.

At the end Granny's barriers have broken down, implanting herself in her new "family" and treating Ka-on like the grandson that she's no longer able to see ("Even when I die and become a spirit, I will continue to pray for his well being..") and there's still hope for happiness for both women.

Ann Hui's direction is bare but her fingerprints are everywhere. There are no comedic distraction to pull us out of the morbid tone of her characters' stories (like she did in "Summer Snow", dealing with the grimmer topics of aging and Alzheimer's disease). We instantly know what is in Cheung's mind (wonderfully plays by veteran TV actress Paw Hee-ching, deservedly named Best Actress in the HK Film Award) with every little gestures - that she's appreciative of having a good son with a hint of a smile, a loving expression that knows how life is still good and a light assuring grab of Granny's hand to pull her up from the dark pit of remorse.

While Hui is unique and successful in her own right, I can't help but thinking back to similar characters in Mike Leigh's films - Cheung has the same stubbornness of Poppy in "Happy-Go-Lucky", her relationship with the brothers is akin to the implicit blood-is-thicker-than-water bond Cynthia has with Maurice in "Secrets and Lies" and the overall "plotless" structure of storytelling is very much like "Life is Sweet".

And its lesson and massage maybe the same - that although life is hard for Cheung, Granny and Ka-on, it's still sweet and hope is everywhere as long as we still have the will to look for it.

I watched this film when I was a teenager, and for years I wanted to write a review on this. Now that I have read some of the comments here, I have recently made an exception to rent and watch this again, hoping that I would somehow find it less, er, upsetting as I am older now and less affected by my own self-imposed political correctness. The answer is, still NO. And I will continue to make a point NOT to see any Steven Spielberg's movies JUST because of this film.

Here's my problem. As a Chinese, I feel this strong empathy with the Jewish community as we, as a race, were both victimized during WWII. Them by the Nazi, we by the Japanese. I can also only watch with envy as a lot of Jewish film makers (especially those in the US, including Mr. Spielberg himself) continue to make movies/documentaries to remember the victims and the courage of many people that were trying to make a difference and save a lot of people from the sheer brutality of the aggressors.

And what the most important Jewish film maker (or just film maker) of this generation did with a story that happened in China during WWII. The film is obviously not about our suffering, and that's fine because it's based on a story of a British boy who got caught. However, in the first 15 mins of the film, when Chinese characters briefly appeared, they were either very cruel (like the housemaids trying to steal things from the British boy's home, and hit him when the boy trying to stop them) or just simply thugs/thieves.

If that's not enough, the boy, no doubt was in a lot of distress and going through a lot of unstable emotions while in the war prisoner camp, found some sort of emotional alliance with a young Japanese soldier who had been trying but failed to become part of an "elite" team of pilots whose only duty at that point of the war was to carry out suicide missions. As commented by another user here the brutality of the camp was kept to a minimum, I don't know why as there is plenty in the book. But what we see in this movie, correct me if I am wrong, is that those pilots are being glorified (or in some symbolic sort of way, the "courage" of the Japanese army) as told by film maker's version of the boy's prospective.

One could only imagine what reaction it would provoke IF this film, with more or less the same storyline, was about, say, a British boy in Prague being capture and sent to a camp by the Nazi during WWII.

A bit of history. Shanghai was a safe haven for a lot of Jewish people in Germany and Europe who couldn't make it to the US and Canada from the 1930s onward. They could go there without passports and, though had to face the Japanese army like the Chinese, at least be saved from systemic murders in Europe. From all historical accounts, they were being treated kindly by the local Chinese.

And here's the reason why I have not watched a single film directed by Mr. Spielberg even since I saw the Empire of the Sun (mid-1980s).

The first 10 mins of the film already tell you what Takeshi Kitano is up to - we see a homeless man eating peacefully and enjoying the foods beside his make-shift home in a park. Suddenly his bowl is hit by a football, and then a gang of teenagers rough him up, giggling while beating up the man mercilessly until he loses conscious. Then all the kids return to their safe middle-class homes.

Kitano, the "violent cop", sees the whole thing, but he doesn't stop the kids right away. Instead, he follows one to his home, shows the kid's mother his police ID, walks up to the kid's room and starts kicking and snapping him, demanding the boy to give himself up to the police tomorrow. To me, the movie more or less ends there. The plot then moves on to the usual good-cop corrupted-cop routine, involving a sub-plot on Kitano's retarded sister. To sum up, the storyline is actually very predictable and fails to create any suspended and dramatic tension.

This is where "Violent Cop" departs from other movies of the same genre - Kitano's violence is raw and real, and he wants to show you in yer face. Unlike the highly stylized and cartoonish violence of John Woo (anything who knows a bit about guns can tell you that you cannot fire a few rounds of bullets from two guns with both hands at the same time when you're jumping off a car), for example, Kitano shows the essence of violence and how it actually affects people, both physically and psychologically.Violence, in the world of Kitano, can come suddenly, aimlessly and randomly, and no one is safe!

"Violent Cop" is an excellent movie on all counts, and Kitano (in both directing and acting) can only go above it in, IMHO, Hana-Bi.It's kind of sad (as a big fan of Kitano) to see him going back to making new movies like "Brothers", a replica in spirit (if not in actual storylines) of his early stunning successes like this one and Hana-Bi. He's actually very good in "Gohatto", and fans like me want him to know that he should try more new things.

Fruit Chan, the director of this second film of a triology about Hong Kong before and after the "handover" (at 1997, when Hong Kong was switched from a British colony to a special administrative region of China), is a rare and truly wonderful treat. The story is about the coming-of-age of a pre-teen boy "Little Cheung", the son of a street-wise owner of a restaurant in the Mongkok area (think Queens in NYC or Mission in San Francisco) and shares the name of a famous Cantonese opera singer. He meets all sorts of characters through helping his father delivering foods to regular customers - a pathetic gang leader, prostitutes, aging owners of funeral homes - and a girl who recently came from China illegally. While not able to study because of her illegal status, the girl "Ah Fan" ends up forming a "partnership" with Little Cheung to deliver foods (and share the tips) which develops into a memorable friendhship for both.

Chan's style is bare and touching, and has a tone that is neither moralistic or judging - no small achievement for a movie that aims to be a social commentary. It simply protriats the tough reality of life through the eyes of a young boy whose goal in life, like most Hong Kong people, is to make more money and satisfy their materialistic needs. Everything else that may touch one's own deeper inner feelings is underplayed or simply hidden.

Although none of the actors in the film is professional, the acting, especially the boy who played "Little Cheung", is superb. There are many references to local culture that may be difficult for non-native audiences, and there are also hints of storylines that come from the two other films ("The longest summer" and "Durian Durian"). But for anyone who wishes to go behind the Hong Kong "genre" and get a real sense of how Hong Kong people live, Fruit Chan's films are excellent starting points.