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2014年8月14日 星期四

The Seventh Lie (第 七謊言)

When the film opens, I find lots of images, light, fuzzy circles with a nice blend of different shades of blue and white which contrast with the piercingly strong straight lines of rectangular forms moving in rhythm with almost earth-shaking bass electronic sound. It's an all-Hong Kong film. I know this one is different.  It's got style.  I know that the film is called intriquingly, "The 7th Lie" What is that? Then I got some hints: images moving from one part of the screen to another in no particular order with words in Chinese describing various kinds of lies that people tell. The 7th is the lie that one tells oneself.

Then we got a gang fight in some dark alley. Some one is being beaten up, perhaps too hard. It went out of control. We see the face of the leader of the 3-member gang charged with "the job" reporting to his boss, fear in his eyes. Soon a car arrives, a chauffeur in black leather suit, cold, indifferent, professional. He is asked by the gang leader to put in a few good words to "big boss" but the chauffeur replies in monotone that he got to do that himself because he was asked only to remove the body. He handles everything deftly, silently and drives off to a deserted beach under cover of darkness where he disposes of the body but after some momentary hesitation, pockets a medallion belonging to the dead man, probably as a souvenir. He's the trusted chauffeur of "big boss".

He's responsible for driving also the wife of big boss's daughter-in- law. It's her birthday. Her husband is said to be in Singapore in connection with some IPO or other. We hear the conversation between the driver and the daughter-in- law. She suspects that her husband did not buy her the earrings and the flowers which the chauffeur said her husband told him to give her. She has dinner with him in a hotel because, having previously announced to all her friends that she would be having dinner with her husband that night, she could not now tell them that her husband had left her to fend for herself that important night. They dine. They drink, perhaps a little too much. She says that she "knew" all along that the chauffeur had a secret affection for her but dared not do anything because he did not want to do anything "out of place". She kisses him and then they make love in a room in the hotel where they dined, where three other parallel narratives are unfolding: a married woman meeting her lover, a bell boy who takes advantage of his position to pick up things left behind by guests and indulge his voyeuristic imagination, a bride who got cold feet just before the wedding is about to start, rushing out to meet her ex-boyfriend to hear his predictions about her chances of finding happiness at Blake Park at Sheung Wan, where eventually he tells her a horrible tale which happened at the nearby public toilet some 30 years ago, where his father's wife died, his father spent years in jails with a crooked cop anxious to extort money from the dying woman to pay his gambling debts to the triads. There he finally admitted to the bride-to-be that he made up a story that he had fallen for another girl so as to make it easier for her to look for another man who would be able to look after her material welfare much better than he could and that he was in fact the son of his father's mistress, the father he never saw in that story he just told her. 

In the meantime, the film inter-cuts between the 3 other stories. The bellboy got into thinking about his own situation, his strained relation with his wife, his inability to stop doing what he's doing viz. pilfering from anxious couples checking into hotel for a quickie secret rendezvous. The wife of the chauffeur's boss's son found out from the embroidered joint names of her husband and her chauffeur on the last's shirt that her husband's secret boyfriend was in fact her chauffeur. Unannounced, her husband returned. We last see both of them leaning against each other at the foot of the hotel room bed, the wife locking herself inside the hotel room toilet, stunned by the discovery. 
 
The film ends when after recounting that horrible tale of intrigues involving gambling debts, blackmail, a middle aged voyeur frequenting that public toilet and the extra-marital affair of father of the bride's "ex" and his confession. They tried to leave. But it was too late. They were "trapped" within the metal mesh fence of that park. It was past closing time. All the gates were locked. No wedding after all. The closing image of the film is the aborted bride's head lying upon her "ex"'s shoulders. What will happen next? It's anybody's guess.

It's a complex story of intrigues, of all kinds of lies that 7 million people can tell, with  thriller-like action-packed sequences interspersed with quieter, more reflective episodes; full of suspense and twists and turns and surprises all linked together by the hotel and never a dull moment. A very welcome addition to HK's filmography from debut director James Hung who also wrote the script. The cinematography by Au Ka On,Ronnie was imaginative, atmospheric and impressive. I like in particular the very original music by Tommy Wai. The acting by Shiu Hung Hui  as Uncle Bing (the murderer), Philip Keung as the crooked Officer Liu, Tsui Na  as The Landlady were excellent and Ronald Cheng as the Bellhop also acceptable. But there's huge room for improvement by the younger actors and actresses who all seem to be so obviously "reciting" their lines, without any conviction at all.

According to internet sources,  the film got the Grand Jury Prize as "best film" at the Barcelona International Film Festival 2014 and the "best foreign film" at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival. The Hong Kong film industry is not yet dead. They certainly need encouragement.  We've got some talent left yet and not just for completely commercial films.


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