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Reggie Mak: The Hong Kong movie audience doesn't matter anymore
Canto-Mando blockbusters are taking over our cinemas and it doesn't matter what we think about them, because the mainlanders are loving it
Recently there were some really great Hong Kong-made low-budget movies.
Take "Echoes of the Rainbow" in 2010 as a stellar example. The Berlin Film Festival awardee became a critical and commercial success, garnering HK$23 million at the box office. It was financed by the Hong Kong Film Development Fund and considered a triumph of good filmmaking over investment capital.
The oh-so-Hong Kong "Love in a Puff" in the same year was a runaway success despite its Category III rating. And this May, the big winner at the Hong Kong Film Awards was "Gallants," a locally-made comedic tribute to Hong Kong martial arts movies in the 1960s and 1970s. It received positive reviews at home and abroad and was the third-highest-grossing film on its opening weekend.
Things seemed to be looking up for Hong Kong-made movies. Or so I thought.
"Gallants" was followed by a few more low-budget local flicks. March brought "Hi Fidelity", a rare Canto-flick about sex and infidelity from the female perspective. Rumors of catfights between the female co-stars kept the movie in the tabloids for weeks. Even with these favorable winds, the movie only grossed a dismal HK$2 million.
In May, there was "The Way We Were" starring hot young stars Fiona Sit and Pak Ho Chau about a father-daughter relationship like Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere" but without the exquisite ambiance. And then there is the soon-to-be-released "Lan Kwai Fong" starring a bunch of pseudo-models.
And examining these three movies makes me conclude that the Hong Kong film industry is officially doomed.
Maybe the joint-venture productions with mainland Chinese film companies will save us again.
Several years ago, when you could barely detect a pulse on the limp wrist of Hong Kong cinema, joint-venture productions with the mainland was a real shot in the arm for us. China's big money and bottomless appetite demanded high quality films with exotic Hong Kong stars.
But joint-ventures with the mainland are always a double-edged sword. There are so many conditions that come with them.
First, there must be some mainland actors in the lead roles. A lot of the female roles are taken up by mainlanders because Hong Kong's male stars have a relatively stronger pulling power than their female counterparts. So the Hong Kong ladies have to be sacrificed.
If they are not given a chance to shine, Hong Kong's next generation of actresses won't be able to match the calibre of their predecessors. When Maggie Cheung and Carina Lam retire, we won't have any divas to take their place.
Joint-ventures are also very strict about their topic selection. We are working with mainland after all.
Stories have to give positive messages, which means no sex, drugs, gambling, triads, homosexuality, or anything subversive to the status quo. In other words, nothing interesting allowed.
With such a narrow path for story selection, joint-ventures tend towards blockbuster-style productions with easily digestible storylines. They'll throw money into special effects and computer graphics and hope that sensual stimuli will make up for simplistic plots.
Like kung fu? Get Donny Yen to make a few kung fu blockbusters. Like ancient Chinese battles? Make a two-part "Red Cliff" and add in "The Warlords" and "The Lost Bladesman." The mainland audience seems to have a ravenous need for this formulaic junk.
These aren't the movies that made me passionate about Hong Kong cinema. It's like a Hong Kong chef adding Sichuan peppers to his Cantonese dish to please the Sichuanese tourists. Sure, he'll make buckets of cash, but does that make the original dish irrelevant?
If we forgot about what made our food -- cinema -- so palatable and attractive in the first place, it would be a most ignorant, short-sighted shame.
So when I saw that "Gallants" won at the Hong Kong Film Awards, I was moved but still blue. The China market is so undeniably huge, such that the Hong Kong audience is rendered insignificant.
Compared to the Chinese market, the Hong Kong box office numbers are nothing. If you don't want to buy a ticket to watch the brainless blockbuster, there are a billion other people who will.
