Hooked on You
Director: Law Wing-cheong
Year: 2007
Rating: 6.0
For much of the film, it feels like an unusual
misstep for one of Milkyway's romantic comedies - but then at the end you
realize this really wasn't a romantic comedy at all - it was just disguised
as one. It was more about change as time relentlessly moves on - for the
characters in the film and for the city itself. Hong Kong. Loved ones die,
jobs change, friends disappear, dreams don't come true, a city never stops
evolving. When you finally realize what director Law Wing-cheong was aiming
for, it becomes touching, thoughtful and slightly manipulative. One scene
in which the characters try to recreate a time from before in Hong Kong only
to have the illusion fall apart, seems to say that for better or worse this
is now Hong Kong. There is no going back to pre-Handover. Law refuses to
go where you expect him to and for a romantic comedy that takes some courage.
I expect a number of audience members left the theater thinking, wait a second.
The main problem as a romantic comedy is
that the two main characters who seem in movie land to be meant for one another
are not that likable for much of the film. This changes over the course of
the movie as they are softened up but as a viewer, I never felt invested
in the outcome. In the real world, I would never put these two together -
but in a film like this, we are expected to root for them to fall in love.
I didn't care either way. Love is a mirage; especially in movies. Miu played
by the always charming and slightly eccentric Miriam Yeung works as a vendor
in the Fortune Market as a fish seller. She is doing this work to help get
her father (Stanley Fung) out of debt. It is 1997 and she is nearing thirty.
In her diary she writes that before hitting the Christmas Cake age of thirty,
she wants to be married to a white-collared working man and living well.
She gets set up on a date by her father to an I.T. man but when she finds
out he is only a manager in a bakery, she loses interest.
The vendors at Fortune Market are a close-knit
group of friends and colleagues, often dining together and dealing with internal
problems. Eason Chan as Fishman and Miu often bump heads as they are both
in the same business of fish. He is a churlish aggressive fellow with the
worst looking curly hair resting on his head in discomfort. He is in the
habit of shortchanging prostitutes that he goes with. They are always fighting
- which in the movie business means they will fall in love. His friend Porky
(Huang Bo) - because of what he sells, not his looks - falls for Miu and
thinks he has a chance till she sets him right. "I will never love a vendor.
This is a life I plan to escape from as soon as my father's debt is paid
off". And she sticks to that.
Ten years pass in the film through SARS
and bad times - a supermarket is built nearby putting Fortune Market out
of business and they all have to find new ways to make money. Miu does very
well and Fishman does ok. He also thankfully gets rid of the curls. They
have become good friends to be able to count on but love still seems a stretch.
A bunch of Milkyway regulars make cameos - Jo Kuk, Raymond Wong, Hui Siu-hung,
Gordon Lam. Law Wing-cheong isn't a name that one normally associates with
Milkyway but he has directed a few for them - 2 Become 1, two of the Tactical
Unit films, Running Out of Time 2 and Punished.
