The Other Half and the Other Half
我愛太空人
Hong Kong, 1988, 35mm, 90mins, color
PHOTO: TAIPEI FILM FESTIVAL
A story set against the impeding return of the former British colony to the Beijing government, when immigration hype was in full force, The Other Half and the Other Half, tells the story of Sam and June, who share a house during the time their respective spouses are away completing immigration residency requirements.
Although their housesharing arrangement starts out as a strictly practical arrangement, "immigration" begins to undermine their relationship with absent partners, and when June's husband returns from Canada, she admits having slept with Sam.
This is Clara Law's first feature film, and in attempting a lighthearted treatment of the effect of immigration residency requirements on interpersonal relations, she fails to escape the conventions of Hong Kong-style situation comedy. Despite this weakness, Other Half is a serious attempt to deal with the problems created by immigration -- a theme that was previously untouched by commercial films despite its extensive relevance to modern day Chinese families.
PHOTO: TAIPEI FILM FESTIVAL
Weak structure is compensated for by the strong script and the care taken over detail. Financial pressure and the damage it can do to relationships is explored effectively and the nuanced re-creation of Hong Kong yuppie life styles is a revelation in a film industry so tirelessly dedicated to popular entertainment.
Autumn Moon
秋月
PHOTO: TAIPEI FILM FESTIVAL
Hong Kong/Japan, 1992, 35mm, 106mins, color
Built on a simple relationship between a Japanese tourist and a 15-year-old Hong Kong girl, Autumn Moon is one of Clara Law's most effective explorations of her signature themes -- the feelings of alienation felt by immigrants or those on the threshold of immigration.
Autumn Moon tells the story of Tokio, a Japanese who is in Hong Kong seeking fine cuisine and a purpose to his life. He finds the food disappointing, but he teams up with Pui-wai, a young girl whose family is in the process of migrating to Canada.
PHOTO: TAIPEI FILM FESTIVAL
Tokio becomes soul mates with Pui-wai's 80-year-old grandmother, a great chef. He discovers the secret to Granny's cooking and learns that she has known all along that her family will not be taking her to Canada when they leave.
The imperfect communication between Tokio and Pui-wai emphasizes the tensions created by dislocation from a familiar environment and raises questions of identity, especially in the person of Pui-wai, who is worried about the unknown world of Canada that her parents seem intent on bringing her into.
Remembering her own childhood, split between a study of English and Chinese, Law said: "In those three years, I became neither one nor the other. I was stuck in the middle, not too Chinese, neither very English."
PHOTO: TAIPEI FILM FESTIVAL
Set against the barren emotional landscape of Hong Kong, the friendship between Tokio and Pui-wai offers an alternative point of contact for lonely souls within an indifferent world.
Floating Life
浮生
Australia, 1996, 35mm, 95mins, color
A film about a family being torn apart by immigration. Floating tells the story of the Changs, who, in the process of immigrating from Hong Kong have become separated into a number of houses in Hong Kong, Australia and Germany.
Hui-bing, one of the first family members to leave Hong Kong, has established herself in Australia, but only at great emotional cost. Unbalanced by the need to fit in her new life, she finds the arrival of other family members an intolerable strain. The time lag produced by the slow machinery of immigration administration creates other tensions between family members.
Floating is considerably more ambitious in scope than Autumn Moon, taking a global view of the Chinese diaspora. Although it deals with the trauma of uprootedness, emotional breakdown and the recognition of the transience of life, Law has woven the strands of comedy and tragedy together very effectively for a surprisingly lighthearted effect.
With its broad theme and Law's characteristic attention to detail, Floating is an excellent sketch of immigrant trauma, but with so much to deal with, it fails to probe more deeply, making it less satisfying Autumn Moon.
The Goddess of 1967
女神1967
Australia, 2000, 35mm, 118mins, color
Clara Law's most recent film sees her making the full transition from Hong Kongese to Asian-Australian filmmaker. In this highly visual film featuring the Australian outback, Clara Law returns to exploring the relationship between two people cut off from their environments.
JM, a young Japanese man, leads a solitary, uneventful life in Tokyo. A representative of the e-generation, he is wedded to gadgets and dreams of owning a very special car, a 1967 Citroen DS (Deesse/Goddess). He locates one in Australia but when he shows up to buy it he finds the seller dead.
A 17 year-old blind girl tells him she can take him to find the owner. Together they embark on a strange and erotically charged journey into the arid Australian desert, populated by abandoned mining towns -- a desolate land and a dark haunting past. Estranged from their environment, one by unfamiliarity and language, the other by blindness, they discover a similar goal: a shared desire to transcend the past and find redemption.
By using the outback as a kind of post-modern stage, Law is able to push her exploration beyond immigration to the fundamental issues of the human condition.
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