Let’s Love Hong Kong

Let’s Love Hong Kong is far from the kind of movie I usually enjoy. This is a low budget, meandering cinéma vérité-style film. Did I mention it’s low budget? Yet for whatever reason, I mostly enjoyed Let’s Love Hong Kong. I thought it was honest and had things to say. I also have absolutely no idea whether my enjoyment of it is objective or subjective. Maybe this is genuinely a good and truthful piece of cinema. Or maybe it’s just an inaccessible film and I’m getting more pretentious over time.

The film follows three young people living in Hong Kong. Chief among them is Chan Kwok Chan. Chan presents herself pretty masculine day-to-day. But unknown to her mother, Chan’s main source of income is working on a website where she dons costumes like a sexy, human paper doll. Chan’s online persona attracts Nicole, who watches Chan’s content obsessively. However, Nicole never encounters Chan in person. In real life, Chan’s main relationship is with a femme sex worker who Chan pays to spend time with. Chan also acquires a real-life stalker name Zero. Zero does her best to actually mean something to Chan and share a connection. But because of either the isolation of the digital age, or the fact that Zero is creepy, this relationship never flourishes.

Let’s Love Hong Kong definitely has themes it wants to explore. Modernity vs tradition is a main one. The early years of the digital age is something the film returns to as a touching point. How does the online sphere change things for people? For their relationships, for their work? Whether the digital sphere is a tool for isolation or connection is a huge question the film asks. The film also deals with variations on sex work. It goes broader, actually. This movie is very much a portrait of working women in 2002. Zero holds various odd jobs and we see Nicole at her office job. And the film presents more similarities than differences between these jobs and the sex work industry. Each of these women are selling their time, their body or their labour. It’s different on the surface, but when you drill down, it’s more of the same.

What works about Let’s Love Hong Kong is that it feels authentic. It’s entirely possible this authenticity is wholly manufactured and I have fallen for it. In fact, that’s definitely at least partially true. This isn’t a documentary, it’s a narrative film. So really, none of this is true. Yet still, the film feels very realistic and truthful. Watching it feels less like engaging with a story and more like a window has been opened to a different time and place. This is a film with a lot of thoughts and simple observations about the actual location of Hong Kong in 2002. The low budget probably helps this. Artifice costs money. It’s far easier to shoot real people and real situations.

Admittedly, my delight in the film’s seeming realism couldn’t carry my through the whole movie. This is a film with only a vaguely linear plot. Nothing is particularly urgent in Let’s Love Hong Kong. It’s mostly just the characters getting along, often unseen in society. The characters feel so real because them and their lives are often mundane. Just like real people! But none of this exactly makes for edge of your seat viewing. Particularly the middle of the film dragged for me. Here are some neighbours you might meet, this is what an apartment at this price point looks like and all of that. But apartment hunting isn’t even interesting to me when I’m the one hunting. Let’s Love Hong Kong is realistic, but part of being realistic means there’s a lot of mundane moments.

Let’s Love Hong Kong will not be to everyone’s taste. Frankly, I’m surprised I enjoyed it. I think 9 days out of 10, I wouldn’t have. But I happened to watch the film on a day where I was predisposed to see the art of the moving image or some bullshit. This is a low budget film but it’s really high on creativity, realism and focused commentary. Very few films with such limited means achieve those three things. Director Ching Yau certainly doesn’t lack for ideas and talent. She managed to make the weird something mundane and the mundane something (usually) interesting to watch.

Overall rating: 5.6/10

Other WLW films in similar genres