GIMME GIMME
Reviewed by YTSL
From the 24th Hong Kong International Film Festival’s
“1999-2000 Hong Kong Panorama” (The Hong Kong Leisure and Cultural Services
Department, 2000:19):-
Interviewer Sam Ho: “You were an outsider all
your life, growing up in South Africa, studying in Hong Kong and then the
U.S. And your best films are docudramas with outsider perspectives.
A result of that experience?”
Director Lawrence Ah Mon (AKA Lawrence Lau):
“I think definitely. I didn’t grow up in Hong Kong and I don’t belong
to those worlds. You can say I’m a voyeur, trying to understand society
through exploration. It’s also practical, because the life around me
is not interesting and this is the only way for me to understand other lifestyles.”
Thus far, I’ve only viewed four of Lawrence Ah
Mon’s celluloid offerings (For the record, these are: “Queen of Temple Street”,
a prostitute drama that features great performances from Sylvia Chang and
Rain Lau; “Three Summers”, set in the Lantau Island fishing village of Tai
O and its environs; “Spacked Out”, a documentary like work which centers
on the activities of five young female live-wires; and GIMME GIMME, another
social dramatic effort whose seven main teen-aged characters all struggle
with understanding and appreciating the joys and burdens of young love and
true friendship). However, doing so has served to convince me that
as long as individuals like him continue to be a part of the HKSAR’s film
industry, hope and humanity will be resident in their world and products.
My reason for stating this stems in large part from this (currently, as of
2001) 42 year old Pretoria-born auteur’s ability to people his movies with
realistic appearing -- and acting -- characters and cast a strong, yet far
from overly harsh, light on the kind of folks that would be easily dismissed
by less tolerant others as delinquent or low-life scum.
Five of GIMME GIMME’s primary characters -- Lobo, Skid, Soda (whose can be
heard being less generically referred to as Sarsi, the name of a popular
sarsaparilla flavored drink in Hong Kong and elsewhere in South-East Asia),
Fion and Suki – are fast friends who all attend the same mixed-gender secondary
school. Not only do they stand apart from “the establishment” because
of their being restless and not particularly conventionally attired and coifed
– Fion has bright orange hair, Skid has two ring-filled holes in one of his
earlobes, Soda’s head is almost but not entirely shaven -- teenagers but
they also are the offspring of the less moneyed members of society, one of
whom is a man jailed on corruption charges. While they seem more law-abiding
than the younger lead personalities of Lawrence Ah Mon’s edgier feeling “Spacked
Out”, Lobo and co. are not adverse to doing such as publicly tease
and embarrass others in the name of fun (e.g., when they play a “pick up”
game that involves their going up to same and different gendered strangers
and pretending to be interested in asking them out for a date) or lifting
a few hundred dollar notes from the wallets and purses of their parents to
finance their karaoke sessions, rave party and other jaunts.
Although Pat (or Siu Pak, as she is also referred to) looks more clean-cut
than the group -- from a different school but who are co-users of a sports
practice area -- that she befriends, she is soon shown to be no complete
innocent or saint herself. However, this is not at all to say that
they are particularly dishonorable and unruly youth. Indeed, upon witnessing
the emotional support they easily give one another and hearing the kind of
sage advice that they share (e.g., “it’s no use to work on something that’s
not working” and “learn to treasure your girlfriend” along with a girl’s
needing to be showered with attention, gifts, compliments and devotion),
this (re)viewer could readily see the good in each and everyone of GIMME
GIMME’s not entirely untroubled characters plus understand why it is that
each member of this social group would value the friendship and company of
the others in it.
As seems to be the wont and habit of more than just teenagers though, GIMME
GIMME’s main personalities are often much more astute at dispensing advice
to -- and mediating between -- their friends and their friends’ lovers than
conducting their own affairs and dealing with their own needs. Inevitably,
this leads to the existence of love triangles in their lives along with some
two, triple and more timing of “pang yau” (a word in Cantonese that translates
as friend but can carry stronger connotations than that). In an age
and a territory where cellular phones abound and long-distance travel is
something many people do, relationships and the quest to find – plus keep
-- true love can be very far flung as well as complicated. Despite
some questioning of “why be so serious at our age?” and assertions that “it’s
just a game”, even the coolest personae find themselves becoming emotional
victims of love rather than just their hormones.
It is a major testament to Lawrence Ah Mon’s masterful direction, Tse Loh
Sze’s sensitive script and the film’s talented newcomer cast (who include
Chui Tin Yue as Lobo, Yoky Lo as Fion, Yoyo Chan Chi Yiu as Pat, Shiu Yu
Wa and Yorky Yuen Cheuk Wai), that this person – who doesn’t usually watch
teenage romance movies – got so into GIMME GIMME and as involved as she did
in the concerns of Lobo, Pat, Skid, Fion, Soda and Mo along with the last
named individual’s sometime boyfriend, Ken. Although I am neither a
teenager nor a known romantic, I don’t think I would be remiss in stating
that this surely far from big budget work seems to be a very genuine and
authentic, and therefore moving, cinematic study of the lives of some not
particularly atypical Hong Kong youth. Like with Mr. Ah Mon’s
first Milkyway Image production (“Spacked Out”), this second one -- in as
many years -- is a surprisingly affecting – yet not at all humorless – effort
that I’m very glad to see the likes of producer Johnnie To having lent his
support to bring to fruition.
My rating for this film: 7.5