Clara Law (
"I've always been between cultures," said the filmmaker who has made the trauma of immigration and displacement the theme on which she has built her reputation. Born in Macao and given a traditional Chinese family upbringing, she was educated at an English-language school in Hong Kong, then studied film in the UK. "So very often I feel my life is drifting. I constantly have an urge to find my roots," she said, speaking in a mixture of Mandarin, English and Cantonese.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
The immigrant experience
This drift between cultures has been the inspiration for her, with scriptwriter-husband Eddie Fong (
"We are not specifically talking about immigration. Rather, we intended to talk about the widespread alienation of modern urban life, a kind of existence without roots," said Eddie Fong. This theme is also the subject of Law's latest film, The Goddess of 1967 (
Law and Fong have cooperated on 12 films, with Law directing and Fong always scriptwriter and sometimes also producer. It's a professional relationship rarely seen within the Hong Kong film industry, but which Law and Fong see as providing an important balance.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING
"I am more analytical and more aware of the story's structure," Fong said. "She is more intuitive." Law agreed, saying, "He works slowly and I rush everything, making big strokes. I sometimes can't stand the way he goes back and forth over the story."
Working together, Law and Fong made Autumn Moon a Golden Leopard winner and Floating Life a Silver Leopard winner at Locarno. The Goddess of 1967 was nominated for a Golden Lion (Best Picture) at Venice 2000, and helped Rose Bryne to a Best Actress award at the same event.
A broader canvas
The success of the Immigration Trilogy is only part of Law's achievement. Law has taken bold steps outside the realm of urban drama with such period pieces as Temptation of A Monk (
Critics have applauded Law's skill at capturing the subtle emotions of encounters between strangers. The characters are usually displaced from their familiar environments, and are forced to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers. Their emotions are intensified by their inability to communicate directly.
In Farewell China, Chinese immigrant Tony Leung (
It is not only Law and Fong's partnership, and their cross-cultural themes, that make them unusual members of Hong Kong's film environment. While many outstanding Hong Kong filmmakers moved to Hollywood around 1997, Law and Fong decided to move to Australia instead. The move, which happened in 1995, was a search for greater creative space for their filmmaking.
"Making films in Hong Kong has been a series of compromises in almost everything," said Fong. For example, he said, Law's debut feature The Other Half and the Other Half (
Downunder
The relocation to Australia began when Law visited the country to complete post-production on Temptation. The visit coincided with the release of Autumn Moon, which was widely praised in the Australian press. "So we were quickly able to get Australian funding for Floating Life, which we never thought would happen so soon," she said. "Melbourne was quieter [than Hong Kong], so we planned to spend half our time there to read, write stories, to recharge ourselves," Law said.
Floating Life, Law's first Australian financed film, was selected by the Australian government last year as one of its eight Road Show films for screening in Australian embassies around the world.
With the making of Goddess, the couple seems having settled entirely in Australia.
Making a film in Australia, Fong said was like starting from square one. "The first thing we did was buy a four-wheeled-drive and visit the outback to feel what it is like in Australia."
In the isolated setting of the Australian outback, Law said, it was easier to feel and express feelings of loneliness; and that these feeling of loneliness were different from those created by Hong Kong.
"In Hong Kong, it's the kind of loneliness because there are many people. In the outback, you feel lonely in the face of the landscape. You tend to think more about essential questions such as your existence," she said.
"You feel scared by the desolation, a place where anything is possible. But it is also a place where you can listen to your heart," Law said. Goddess was the result of this outback expedition.
Despite the lush images, the story is about the loneliness of a person's inner self, Law said.
The emphasis on visual presentation had another purpose -- communication with the audience. "Because it is my first English speaking film, I wanted to make the audience understand the story with the smallest effort and the fewest words; that means through the use of images, a more direct communication." By moving to Australia, Law and Fong have not abandoned their oriental background.
In Goddess, Law adopted the "scatter projection" method of traditional Chinese painting and made it a narrative technique for the film. The juxtaposition of different memories and events creates a multi-layered effect in what is essentially a road-movie.
"We consciously adopt an oriental way of storytelling in our films," Fong said. The critical success of Goddess seems to indicate that Law and Fong have been successful in combining the orient with the Australian outback. Their next film, Mechanical Bird, will show how durable the formula is.
Taipei Film Festival screenings:
Autumn Moon
Sunday Dec. 31, 2:10 Wednesday Jan. 3 11am at Warner Cinema 17 The Other Half and the Other Half Sunday Dec. 31, 11am Tuesday Jan. 2, 12:45pm at Warner Village 15
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