How Wayne Wang's Chinese Box presented the 1997 Hong Kong handover from a unique viewpoint
Wang was born in Hong Kong but is best known for his work in the United States, his adopted home. Being 'one side Chinese and one side American', as he considers himself, put him in a unique position.
Perhaps the closest is Chinese Box (1997), an American indie film directed by Wayne Wang The Joy Luck Club ).
While there are plenty of Hong Kong films about the city's 1997 handover to China after British rule , there are precious few told from a Western perspective.
This is the latest instalment in a feature series reflecting on instances of East meets West in world cinema, including China-US co-productions.
In the months leading up to the handover, we see him romancing bartender Vivian (
Gong Li in her first non-Chinese movie), in the process realising he hardly understands her world at all.
'Sometimes you just fall in love with a place, without really knowing why, without really fully understanding it – the way I fell in love with Vivian,' he admits in voice-over.
When he is not mooning over Vivian, John takes to the streets with his camcorder, trying to get to know the real Hong Kong before it is too late. This is how he meets Jean (
Maggie Cheung Man-yuk ), a hustler with a scarred face and stories to tell about the city's underworld.
'She's caught between two worlds with a certain amount of denial of her own identity, and yet she's a great survivor, which is what Hong Kong is,' Wang told entertainment news outlet The AV Club.
Jeremy Irons and Maggie Cheung in a still from Chinese Box.
John is more prosaic. As the author of a book about making money in Asia, he has the slightly unsavoury air of a Western man in love with an exotic idea of the East.
Irons is great at playing this type of character, as shown in David Cronenberg's M. Butterfly (1993), where he plays a French diplomat obsessed with John Lone's Chinese opera singer.
The women get a predictably rougher ride.
Vivian is in love with Chang (
Michael Hui Koon-man ), a businessman who refuses to marry her because of her past working as a prostitute.
Throughout the film, Vivian mostly appears beautifully unobtainable behind a bar, but in an unguarded moment she vamps along to Marlene Dietrich's 'Black Market'.
Michael Hui and Gong Li in a still from Chinese Box.
Jean, meanwhile, describes harrowing memories of familial sexual assault for one of John's interview tapes. And when John helps her reunite with her high school love, William (Jared Harris), she is shocked that he does not remember her.
If Vivian and Jean function more as metaphors for how the West has historically idealised, abused and ignored the East, at least Wang captures the clashing energies of the city itself.
From the clattering food stalls to the upscale bars, and the fish markets to the Foreign Correspondents' Club, we see it all, often through the lens of a roving handheld camera.
For extra verisimilitude, Wang also splices in news footage, clips of fireworks over Victoria Harbour and even a cheeky shot of the South China Morning Post.
Michael Hui, Gong Li and Jeremy Irons in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, in 1997. Photo: Dickson Lee
And the director does not shy away from politics.
The film opens with the staged suicide of a Chinese protester terrified of the forthcoming regime change.
We then see drunk expats playing down such worries, calling Hong Kong 'a bloody casino'. As the film continues, there are bomb threats, protests and civil unrest as John and Vivian's slightly underwhelming love story plays out.
'Every day, I would look at the headlines, cut a news clipping out and have Jeremy Irons read it on his desktop,' Wang said.
'At other times, it would be something more subtle, where maybe the Chinese officials are being non-committal about certain things, and I would try to use that as a subconscious, contextual thing for a scene.
'Let's say I was shooting a scene between Gong Li and her boyfriend, and the boyfriend is non-committal about his relationship to her. There are many different levels of trying to capture the mood, the uncertainty and the changes that were going on in the city.'
Michael Hui, Jeremy Irons and Gong Li in a still from Chinese Box.
To begin with, John is blasé about the handover. 'This great big department store is just having a change of management, that's all,' he says.
But by the film's close, once he has loved, lost and come to understand Hong Kong better, he sees things more philosophically.
'Everything in this city has always been changing,' he tells us, and the handover is just another stage in its life cycle.
There is a lot to unpack – perhaps too much for a 99-minute movie. What Wang shows so beautifully is that Hong Kong is a city of many sides – no matter who it belongs to.
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