The New Hong Kong Cinema and the "Déjà Disparu" Author(S): Ackbar Abbas Source: Discourse, Vol

Home , Allen Fong, Ann Hui, Days of Being Wild, Stanley Kwan, Tsui Hark

The New Hong Kong Cinema and the "Déjà Disparu" Author(s): Ackbar Abbas Source: Discourse, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Spring 1994), pp. 65-77 Published by: Wayne State University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41389334 Accessed: 22-12-2015 11:50 UTC

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This content downloaded from 142.157.160.248 on Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:50:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The New Hong Kong Cinema

and the Déjà Disparu

Ackbar Abbas

For about a decade now, it has become increasinglyapparent that a new Hong Kong cinema has been emerging.It is both a popular cinema and a cinema of auteurs,with directors like Ann Hui, Tsui Hark, Allen Fong, John Woo, Stanley Kwan, and Wong Rar-wei gaining not only local acclaim but a certain measure of international recognitionas well in the formof awards at international filmfestivals. The emergence of this new cinema can be roughly dated; twodates are significant,though in verydifferent ways. The firstoccurs around 1979, which is when a new genera- tion of Hong Kong-bornfilmmakers, educated in film schools abroad and withno direct ties witheither China or Taiwan, turn to filmmakingafter a period of apprenticeshipin local television. The resultis a cinema thatin termsof technical competence and thematicrichness represents a qualitativeleap forwardfrom what wentbefore. Three filmsreleased in 1982 exemplifythis moment: Tsui Hark's Zu: Warriorsfrom the Magic Mountain, a kung fu film distinguishedby its brilliantmastery of special effects;Ann Hui's Boat People, about Vietnamese refugees,a courageous use of cinema to deal with pressing social and political issues; and Allen Fong's Fatherand Son, withits quasi-autobiographicalstory about growingup in working-classHong Kong, where everydaylife is presentedby means of a sophisticatedfilm language. The second date is, I believe, even more consequential for Hong Kong cinema - 1984, the year of Thatcher's visitto China which culminatedin theJoint Declaration returningHong Kong

This content downloaded from 142.157.160.248 on Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:50:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 66 Discourse16.3 to China in 1997. The JointDeclaration caused a certainamount of anxiety,even though one of its termsis that the sociopolitical structureof Hong Kong will remain unchanged for fiftyyears (according to the slogan "one country,two systems").But it also had one other effect.It made Hong Kong people look at their countrywith new eyes. It is as if the possibilityof the disappear- ance of this social and cultural space led to seeing it in all its complexityand contradictionfor the firsttime: an instance, as Benjamin would have said, of love at last sight. The new Hong Kong cinema ultimatelyis interesting,then, not because it has caught up in termsof technical competence and sophistication withthe restof the worldbut because of the wayfilm is being used to explore and negotiate a problematicand paradoxical cultural space withoutabandoning its role as popular entertainment.The new Hong Kong cinema claimsour attentionbecause it has finally found a subject- it has found itselfas a subject. The currentfascination with Hong Kong by the people of Hong Kong themselvesis in some strange way a new phenom- enon. There has, of course, alwaysbeen widespread interestin Hong Kong on the part of locals and foreignersalike, especially since 1949 when the cityembarked in earnest on its spectacular international career. The American conservative economist Milton Friedman, we remember,raved about Hong Kong as a capitalistutopia. But until recentlythis interestwas focused pri- marilyon economics and politics,and to a lesserextent on history (attributableperhaps to colonialist embarrassment).From these perspectives,many studies of Hong Kong are available. However, when it comes to the much more elusive question of Hong Kong culture,all to be foundwas largelymystification and disavowal.To avoid the issue of Hong Kong culture,locals and expatriatesalike used to take refugebehind the image of Hong Kong as a "cultural desert,"as ifculture meant onlyShakespeare, Beethoven, and the like or even Peking Opera for that matter (the scarcityof all of whichwas loudlybemoaned) . On the question of culture,it was as ifthe people of Hong Kong lived througha versionof whatFreud calls the "familyromance": the fantasyof some childrenthat their real parentsare not theiractual parents.The resultis thatstories about Hong Kong always turned into stories about somewhere else, as if Hong Kong culturewere somehow not a subject.This is a case of whatFreud calls "reversehallucination": if hallucination is seeing whatis not there,then reversehallucination is not seeing what is there. This reversehallucination - not seeing what is there - sug- geststhat if Hong Kong cinema mayhave found itselfas a subject, Hong Kong as a subject is one that threatensto get easily lost

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again. This time the threatwill not be that there is no interestin Hong Kong - Hong Kong is today a prettyhot topic. The threat will be that Hong Kong as a subject will be presented and repre- sented in terms of the old binarisms whose function it is to restabilizedifferences and domesticatechange (among the most pernicious are binarismslike East and West or traditionand modernity).Precisely because Hong Kong is such an elusive subject, thereis a temptationto use, and to believein, the establishedforms of (mis) representation.This is dis-appearance, then, in a veryspe- cificsense in thatit givesus a realitythat is not so much hidden as purloined. In the same way,the binarismsused to representHong Kong as subject give us not so much a sense of déjà vu as an uncannyfeeling of whatwe mightcall the déjà disparu: the feeling thatwhat is new and unique about the situationis alwaysalready gone, and we are leftholding a handfulof clichés. It is onlyfrom this point of view thatwe can query a remarkoften made about Hong Kong cinema: that it is the least contemplativecinema in the world.If it is not a contemplativecinema, it is because thereis no timefor contemplation. Things move too fast. The problem that the new Hong Kong cinema faces, therefore,is how to keep pace witha subject thatis alwayson the verge of disappearing. Both the opportunitiesand the dangers that face the new Hong Kong cinema can be related to the nature of Hong Kong itselfas cultural space, about which I want to brieflymake four points, the firstof which involvesthe question of historyand its spatialization.As a city,Hong Kong has been very much the playthingand ambiguous beneficiaryof history.Colonized by the Britishin the nineteenthcentury; occupied by theJapanese in the Second World War; swelled by the influxof refugeesfrom com- munistChina after1949, which gave it so many of its cooks and tailorsand entrepreneurs;taken in hand by the multinationalsas it developed into an internationalcity; and now to be returnedto China: Hong Kong's historyis one of shock and radical changes. As if to protect themselvesagainst this series of traumas,Hong Kong people have littlememory and no sentimentfor the past. The general attitudeto everything,sometimes indistinguishable fromthe spiritof enterprise,is: cancel out and pass on. (In this regard,it is worthnoting that there is as yet no historyof Hong Kong writtenfrom a post-1984perspective.) But historyexists, if not in survivingmonuments or writtenrecords, then in the jos- tling anachronisms and spatial juxtapositions that are seen on everystreet; that is, historyis inscribedin spatial relations.When the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank building designed by Norman Fosterwas being built,for example, this ultra-high-techmultina- tional building was surrounded by traditionalChinese bamboo

This content downloaded from 142.157.160.248 on Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:50:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 68 Discourse16.3 scaffolding:an image of historyas palimpsest.One of the features of new Hong Kong cinema (exemplified most outstandinglyin StanleyKwan's 1988 Rougeand 1991 CentreStage) is itssensitivity to spatial issues and itsadoption of a spatial narrativeboth to under- line and to come to termswith these historicalanachronisms: space as a means of reading a historyin the process of itsmaking. We get a bettersense of the historyof Hong Kong throughits new cinema, withits representationsof architectureand everydaylife than is currentlyavailable in any textbook. Related to the question of space is that of affectivity.In a problematicspace, affectivityin turnbecomes problematic.It is as if all the waysof relatinghave somehow shifted,the bonds which join us to others as friendsand lovers, as daughters and sons blurringlike the lines on a televisionscreen that is not tracking properly.It is not just a question of "traditional"emotional re- sponses versusmodern indifference:the opposition between traditionand modernityis alreadytoo stable and predictable.Rather whatwe findrepresented now are emotions thatdo not belong to anybodyor to any situation- affectiveintensities with no name. Thus in Stanley Kwan's Love Unto Waste (1986), a kind of Felliniesque studyof decadence, love is a bad habit or a whimor a weakness,an expense of spiritin a waste of shame. In Rougethe most intense emotion belongs... to a ghost. In Wong Kar-wei's Days ofBeing Wild (1991), withits structure of interlappingstories, human relationsmay still be painful but theyhave lost all their seriousaspects and take on instead a serialquality of transferences, exchanges, and repetitions- all to the background music of old dance hall songs withtheir suggestions of faded passions. From what vantage point can the filmmakerdescribe this culturalspace and sick eros? Certainlynot fromthe outside,from a privileged critical distance. So while there are a number of successfulcomedies, thereare no parodies or ironicpresentations of Hong Kong societyin the new Hong Kong cinema comparable to, say, Robert Altman's ironic portraitsof America in Nashville (1975) or A Wedding(1978). The position of the Hong Kong filmmaker,then, is whatwe mightcall a position of criticalproximity,where one is alwaysa part of what one is criticizing.This bringsme to a thirdobservation about the new Hong Kong cinema, which concerns the use of genres. Given commercial pres- sures, it is understandable that even the most independent of filmmakersfind themselvesworking with popular genres like the gangster(or "hero") film,the ghoststory, and the kung fu movie. What is remarkable,however, is that these filmmakersproduce some of theirbest workwithin these genres (this is an example of what I mean by criticalproximity). Although most Hong Kong

This content downloaded from 142.157.160.248 on Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:50:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Spring1994 69 filmsare meretriciousand formulaic,we also findWong Kar-wei's 1989 As TearsGo By (a "gangster"film), Stanley Kwan's 1988 Rouge (a "ghost"film), and Tsui Hark's 1992 Once Upona Timein China Part I (a "kungfu" movie). By no means parodies of theirrespec- tivegenres, these filmsuse the limitsof genre as a disciplineand a challenge (somewhatlike writinga poem in rhyme). Fourth, the language of the new Hong Kong cinema is Cantonese (or more precisely,that version of Cantonese prac- ticed in Hong Kong). This was not always the case. In the late seventiesthe sociologistI.C. Jarviedivided Hong Kong filminto Cantonese and Mandarin, arguing that Cantonese movies were unwesternizedand designed entirelyfor local consumption,while Mandarin movies were cosmopolitan, technicallyaccomplished, and in touch withthe contemporaryworld. If these observations had some cogencyfor the earlyseventies, they have proved to be irrelevantfor Hong Kong cinema in the eighties and nineties. The new Hong Kong cinema has indeed gone over to Cantonese, just as has pop music (whatis called Canto-rock).But in doing so, it has not simplyasserted the importanceof the local, it has also changed the way in which the local is regarded. In the older Cantonese movies,the local was an ethos of exclusion: it defineda narrowhomogeneous social space where foreignersand foreign elementshad no place, whichis whatgives these old movies,when we watchthem now, a certaincampy quality. The new localism,on the other hand, investigatesthe dislocations of the local, where the local is somethingunstable thatmutates right in frontof our eyes, like the language itself. Hong Kong Cantonese now is sprinkled with snatches of Mandarin, English, and barbarous sounding wordsand phrases - a hybridlanguage coming out of a hybridspace. It is by being local in this way that the new Hong Kong cinema is most international.Conversely, some of the at- tempts to be "international"- by using a foreign city as background, for example, as in Clara Chung's well-regardedAutumn Story, a filmabout Hong Kong Chinese in New York made in the late eighties- maystrike us as awkwardand provincial. The new localism does not just present Hong Kong as a subject worthyof attention,it develops what we mightcall a new Hong Kong subjectivityas it moves towardsa difficultand idiosyn- craticform of postcoloniality.Changes in the nature of this sub- jectivitycan be indicated by a briefconsideration of the kung fu film- fromBruce Lee to Tsui Hark. In the filmsof Bruce Lee there is, among other things,a clear but simplisticanticolonial note, whichwas certainlyone of theiroriginal attractions.It took theform of beating up Caucasiansor Japanese, and of remindingthe audience of entrenchedracist obscenities (such as the stereotypeof

This content downloaded from 142.157.160.248 on Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:50:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 70 Discourse16.3 the Chinese as the sick man of the Orient and signs in public parkswhich read "Chinese and dogs not allowed"). Of course, the more obvious attractionof a Bruce Lee film is the beauty of movement,the way in which the fightsare choreographed as a kind of dance. But there is something else here that deserves attention.When Bruce Lee fights,it is notjust a dance, it is also a trance(he seems to go into a trance, making squealing noises, which has since become a kind of Bruce Lee signature). In relation to the question of postcoloniality,this trance-likestate is more than a littleambiguous: it is as ifwhomever Bruce Lee fights against,he is fightingagainst shadows, as if the real enemy were not reallyclearly defined. By contrast,in Tsui Hark's OnceUpon a Timein ChinaPart I, subjectivityis more clearlyrealized. The film itselfis a remake of a well-knownseries of filmsabout Huang Fei Hung, the Chinese martialarts hero. In the old series,Huang Fei Hung is portrayedby a real-lifekung fu masterwho projects a stern authoritarianpersona. Tsui Hark's new Huang Fei Hung differsin two significantrespects: 1) he is portrayedby a young actor whose authorityderives from his professionalism,not his age, and 2) the main fight,brilliantly filmed, is not between Huang and foreignersbut between the progressivehero and a traditionalkung fu masterwho is being manipulated by outside interests- postcoloniality,in other words, is also a matter of overcomingtraditional prejudices. All in all, in Hark's Once Upon a Timein Chinathe issues are more clearlydefined, coming from a postcolonial sensitivity(by contrastwith the filmsof Bruce Lee wherethe frameworkis stillcolonial). Of the fouraspects of Hong Kong as a culturalspace whichI have mentioned,the relationship between the new Hong Kong cinema and postcolonialityis the mostimportant. It can be best discussed in termsof specificfilms, a numberof whichI willturn to now.

Wong Kar-wei'sdebut filmAs TearsGo By may seem an un- likely work to include in a discussion of cinema and postcoloniality.As I've already noted, it is an example of the "gangster"genre, known in Hong Kong as the "hero" movie,after the Chinese titleof the series of verypopular filmsmade byJohn Woo (the English titleof the series is A BetterTomorrow). Woo's film,like his others, presents us with all the expected violent action of the genre and all the sexual stereotypesof macho men and beautifulwomen. Where it distinguishesitself is in itspresen- tation of the theme of the need for personal loyalties,usually

This content downloaded from 142.157.160.248 on Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:50:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Spring1 994 71 between male friends,in a crumblingworld (this is characteristic of his other filmsas well). So while the settingmay be the tough, urban lifeof underworldHong Kong, the sentimentis fairlysoft, not unlike that of, say, MatthewArnold's "Dover Beach." The popularityof thisfilm - and his others- can be largelyexplained by this collusion between toughness and sentimentality,which binds the narrativetogether into one cohesive space. Wong's filmis thus partlyabout bonding - male bonding in a violent world. One main strand of the storydeals with the friendshipbetween two local hoods, the hero and his younger friend.The friendis eventuallymanipulated by gangs to carryout an association that can only lead to his own death. The hero, unable to dissuade or protecthim, followshim and gets shot too. But unlike in Woo's series of films,this male space is only one of the spaces in Wong's film.There are other spaces of equal impor- tance, specificallythe affectivespace mapped out between the hero and heroine (the film'stitle in Chinese - Mongkok Carmen - is more informative:Mongkok is the sleazy,vice-ridden district in Kowloon, while Carmen is, of course, the passionate Bizet character). These spaces exist side by side, never quite cohering or supportingone another. And throughoutthe filmwe see the charactersgoing back and forthbetween these spaces, like inef- fectual windshieldwipers: from Lantau island, a quiet undevel- oped part of Hong Kong where the heroine lives, to the mean streetsof Mongkok where the hero's friendis alwaysin trouble. Scenes of lovemakingare alwaysinterrupted by messages of violence in a disconcertingcadence, so much so that one can become associated and confusedwith the other.For example, Wong shoots the kiss in a phone booth between Maggie Cheung and AndyLau - one of the mosterotic scenes in Hong Kong cinema - in the same waythat he shoots the fightscenes: both these scenes erupt suddenly,it is a violence that comes out of nowhere, and both are shot in slow motion. Slow motion,however, is not being used here to romanticizeor aestheticizeeither love or violence; it is used analytically:to study,to understand. But analysisby slow motion,like analysisby blowup, leads at a certain point only to a blurringof the image, that is, to bewildermentrather than to understanding.The closer you look, the less thereis to see. It is as if for Wong the gangsterfilm, with all its clichés, somehow becomes an exercise in a hopeless epistemology;as if everyshot has to be closelyattended to, because thingsare alwayssurreptitiously passing you by. This is the déjà disparu, a realitythat is always outpacing our awareness of it, a realitythat the filmcontinually triesto catch up with.Hong Kong criticshave called As TearsGo By "existential";they see in it a search forauthentic experience even

This content downloaded from 142.157.160.248 on Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:50:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 72 Discourse16.3 though experience has shrunkonly to a moment.But if even the moment (and hence any possible site of authenticity)has disap- peared, thenwhere are we? WhatWong givesus is an anachronistic existentialhero in a postmodernsituation. What is so remarkable about As Tears Go By is the way it manages, at the same time, to draw on and to destabilize the standard images and situations of the gangster film. What we notice most about the film- fromthe opening creditswith the shot of multipletelevision screens incongruouslyjuxtaposed with a neon sign of a China Productsdepartment store, to the closing sequence where the shooting of the hero is intercutwith one quick shot of a flickeringmemory of lovemaking- is its visual density,the intelligence of its images: for example, the use of exaggerated reds and blues or of a bleached, almost black and white,screen; the choice of unusual, disorientingcamera angles, like shots directlyfrom above or below; the use of closeups and slow motionwhich functions to define the incoherence of love or violence. But, as I am suggesting,it is not a visual densitythat coheres or allows us to map out an intelligiblespace. Rather the images disorientby refusingto stabilize. For example, the film ends, as so manyin the genre do, withthe hero's violent death; but in the finalshot, although the hero is dead the image contin- ues to throbon, like a heartbeat,as if it had acquired a life of its own. As TearsGo Bymakes no directreferences to the problematic of postcolonialism.However, its filmicpractice, particularly in its relation to genre, bears a homologous relation to the political situationof Hong Kong today. The end of Britishrule and the returnof Hong Kong to China does not mean the end of colonial rule. If Hong Kong people mustwait for the departureof all the colonial powersbefore postcoloniality can begin, theywill have to waita verylong time.An alternativestrategy is to workwithin the given paradigms (which does not necessarilymean accepting them), all the while workingto reuse and reconsteliate the exist- ing elements. This would be a postcolonialism that precedes decolonization. We find a transposedversion of this in the rela- tionshipof Wong's filmto its genre. If the formulaicdemands of the genre of the "gangster"film imply colonization and self-colonization by clichés, and if subvertingthe formulaicis not viable fora numberof reasons (such as the need to get financialsupport to make films), there is still a third possibility:that of doing somethingelse withthe genre,of nudgingit a littlefrom its stable position and so provokingthought. This is postcolonialitynot in the formof an argument;it has alreadybecome a practice.

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A filmof a verydifferent kind that doeshave an argumentis Ann Hui's Song of theExile (1990), which is set in the domestic space of middle-classHong Kong and focuses on the relation between a mother and daughter. One of the many interesting featuresof Ann Hui's filmis thatit takesus awayfrom the largely male concerns of Hong Kong cinema (Wong Kar-weiis not ex- empt fromthis charge). Songof the Exile begins withthe daughter receivingan M.A. in media studiesin London but failingto get an interviewwith the BBC (while her Britishclassmate does). She decides to returnto Hong Kong to attend her sister'swedding, and there she encounters her motherwith whom she has never gottenalong. There is a flashbackto earlydays in Macau (lovingly recreated): memories of livingwith her grandparents,of an ab- sent fatherworking in Hong Kong, of a verydifferent mother - quiet, self-effacing,a dutifuldaughter-in-law. What has she become now?Just as we thoughtthis was going to be another film- yawn,yawn - about the clash between traditionand modernity, Chinese customs and Westernways, both the daughter and the audience have a revelation:it turnsout that the motheris in fact Japanese, that she met her husband duringJapan's last days in Manchuria. All the daughter's memories of the past and of her mother's behavior are reassessed in the light of this knowledge. We have another flashbackto Macau, to a past which looks the same but whichis now understood differently.The daughterreal- izes for the firsttime how difficultit must have been for her motherliving as an isolated,oppressed subject in Chinese society, set apart by her customs (the grandparentsalways complained that her food was not hot enough) and by her ignorance of the language, which the daughter misread as quietness. Within the domestic drama, then, we find a historicalallegory of a colonial situationwith a Japanese (traditionallythe Hong Kong image of the oppressor) as the oppressed. The daughter's sentimentaland political education contin- ues in the second part of the film when she accompanies her motherto her home townin Japan. And there it is the daughter's turnto go throughthe experience of being an alien in a strange country.In one scene she loses her wayand wanders into a farm where she picks an apple to eat. The farmerappears and shouts excitedlyat her in Japanese. We knowfrom the subtitlethat he is warningher not to eat the fruitbecause it has been sprayedwith pesticides.She thinksthat he is threateningto prosecute her for stealing and runs away. The more the farmerruns afterher to warn her, the harder she triesto run. Ignorance of the language makesher believe thatshe is a criminal.The episode ends happily, though, as they eventuallymeet the village's English-speaking

This content downloaded from 142.157.160.248 on Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:50:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 74 Discourse16.3 school teacherwho explains everything,just as the filmitself ends happilywith mother and daughterfinally achieving some kind of understandingof each other. The need for understanding- this is Ann Hui's principal theme. Here is the voice of liberal Hong Kong, which believes that the past and historyitself can be changed throughthe over- coming of misunderstandingsand prejudices. Her song of the exile is not a siren's song thatleads to rash actions (as Wong Kar- wei's filmlargely is), but a rationalsong of reconciliation,a song about the end of exile throughunderstanding. This is both the film's strengthand weakness. It offershope for understanding, but it does not address withsufficient clarity or take far enough the question of how the cultural space of Hong Kong can be understood or grasped. As a result,despite all its insights (for example, that patriotismis a form of ethnocentricity), and its concern withsocial and political issues, Song of theExile remains just another privatestory. And the reason forthis, it seems to me, is that colonialism is not just a misunderstanding,and explana- tionsalone cannot make it go away. As withAnn Hui's Songof Exile, in StanleyKwan's Rougethe historyof Hong Kong as a cityis woveninto the storiesof personal relationships.The filmcuts back and forthbetween Hong Kong in the early1930s and the late 1980s. As withlike Wong Kar-wei's As Tears Go By, Rougeuses a mixtureof popular genres. It has elementsof the nostalgiafilm: the vanishedworld of the thirties- with its beautifulcourtesans, dashing heroes, and baroquely el- egant settings- is lovinglyrecreated. It can be taken as a story about star-crossedlovers. Fleur, the toast of Shek Tong Tsui (Hong Kong's red-lightdistrict in the thirties),falls in love with Chan Chen-bong (also known as Twelve Master), scion of a rich and respectable Chinese business community.The only resolution in the thirtiesto such a social mismatchis death, and they eventuallyagree to commitsuicide together.This introducesan- other generic element into the film,the ghost story.Unable to meet up with Chen-bong in the afterlife,Fleur returnsto the world afterwaiting for over fiftyyears to look forhim. She places an ad in a newspaper: "3811. Rendezvous at the usual place" ("3811" stands for March 8, 11 p.m., the time of their suicide). But Chen-bong does not show up at the appointed hour. The journalistYuen who worksat the newspaperand his girlfriendAh Chor, a fellowjournalist, decide aftersome vacillation to help Fleur in her search forChen-bong. Rouge, therefore,is made up of elementsvery popular witha Hong Kong audience. But to call Rougea "ghoststory" is as much offthe markas to call Sergio Leone's OnceUpon a Timein theWest

This content downloaded from 142.157.160.248 on Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:50:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Spring1994 75 a "Western."For one thing,as a "ghost,"Fleur is presented with remarkablerestraint (with none of the use of special effectsfound in popular ghostfilms) . She can do none of the thingsthat ghosts are supposed to do. She is distinguishedonly by her silkdress (the cheong-sam, rarely seen nowadaysas daily wear), by certain man- nerismsand old formsof expression,and by her formalstyle of makeup (emphasized in the film'sopening shots); a revenantwho hasjust stepped out of a freeze-frame,"unchanged forfifty years," as Ah Chor skepticallyputs it. (Note here the ironic referenceto the Sino-BritishJoint Declaration on the futureof Hong Kong.) Thus in Rouge, »the genre of the ghost story is being used innovativelyas a device for exploring the problematichistorical space of Hong Kong culture,for bringingtwo periods of Hong Kong historytogether in a historicalmontage or what earlier I called a spatial narrative. What at firstlooks like a series of flashbacksthat contrasts past and present is in fact somethingmore original. Flashbacks implicate us in a linear narrative,while the effectof the cutting back and forthis to establish a doubletemporal framework for all actions,allowing "before" and "after"to chase each other.We see some obvious changes and discontinuities:a well-knowntheater has been replaced by a 7-Eleven,Ti Hung Lu (the pleasure house whereFleur worked) bya kindergarten.But the filmalso showsus a subtlerkind of discontinuity:the discontinuitythat exists within apparent continuity.For example, tramsand Chinese Opera have both continued to exist from the thirtiesinto the eighties,but theirfunctions have changed. Similarly,human passion is found in all periods of history,but it does not necessarilysignify the same thing. This kind of change-within-continuityis the most provocativeaspect of the film - its uncanny or ghostlyaspect. Fleur's ghostlypassion challenges the noncommittalemotional attitudesof Yuen and Ah Chor. They become more and more deeply involved in Fleur's search for Chen-bong because they glimpse that the outcome will affecttheir own lives. "We are as anxious to see Twelve Master as you are," Ah Chor tells Fleur towardsthe end. The "ghost story"becomes an exploration of affectivityand the wayit unfoldsin differentcultural spaces. The love betweenFleur and Chen-bonghas an intensitythat both attractsand appalls the contemporarycouple. Their sympa- thyfor Fleur keeps fluctuating.Such passion demands an abso- lute commitmentthat they are eitherunwilling or unable to make. For example, there is one scene which showsAh Chor and Yuen eroticallystimulated by their discussionof Fleur's affair,and they end up makingpassionate love. But afterthe lovemakingshe asks him in a voice-over:Will you commitsuicide forme? No, he says.

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And you forme? he asks. No, she replies. On the other hand, the uncompromisingnature of passion has a sinisterside as well. This emerges as we learn the details leading up to the double suicide. Not onlydid the loversswallow raw opium together,but Fleur also put sleeping pills in Chen-bong's wine withouthis knowledge. This makes Ah Chor accuse Fleur of being a murderessand she drives Fleur from the house. However, on reflectionAh Chor relents,as she realizes thather anger stemsfrom her jealousy of a passion that she lacks. "It is difficultto be a woman.... Who among us has her passion?" In contrast to the old lovers, the contemporarylovers, like contemporaryHong Kong society,find it difficultto committhemselves as theyflounder in a confusion of values. However, the film does not simplyset up a neat polarity between commitmentand compromise.We still have the ironic ending, where we learn that Chen-bong survivedthe suicide at- tempt.He went on to marrya respectablewoman whom he did not love, to squander the familyfortune, and to surviveinto the presentas a physicaland spiritualwreck, working as a filmextra. The implication,therefore, is that even in the most intense love there is misjudgment,error, weakness. The cultivationof personal intensitiesas a refugefrom a morallyimperfect world that demands constantcompromise cannot avoid contaminationfrom such a world. "Who wants to die?" Ah Chor asks Fleur, speaking for survival.But then Chen-bong's survivalis also his form of punishmentfor not keeping faith.A finalconclusion to be drawn fromthe ending is to read it as posing a problemabout action and conduct in a Hong Kong uncertain about how to deal with its future,a problem thathas as yetno resolution.

How Hong Kong cinema willdevelop in the next fewyears is not clear. But what seems clear is thatif it is to maintaina direc- tion of itsown, it can onlydo so bydeveloping a new,or let us say, postcolonial subjectivity,which cannot be just another recombi- nation of given elements from East and West. The new Hong Kong cinema and the new Hong Kong subjectivityhave one im- portant aspect in common: both pose the question of the postcolonialsubject as a problem of self-invention.Such a subject does not yethave a name: it is not Chinese, or overseas Chinese, or internationalist.Nor does it have a language. It existsas yetas a set of contradictions.Nevertheless there are signs thatsomething is happening - in the emergent theoreticaldiscourse on Hong Kong, in some kinds of writing,and perhaps most persuasivelyin the new Hong Kong cinema, largelybecause if"reverse hallucination" is the ailment,then cinema is in the best position to reverse

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such reversalsand reshape our recognitions.The importantpo- liticalrole of the Hong Kong cinema would be to help in the self- inventionof a postcolonial subject by makinggood movies.

WorksCited

Armes,Roy. ThirdWorld Film Making and the West.Berkeley: U of CaliforniaP, 1987. Jarvie,I.C. Windowon Hong Kong. Hong Kong:Hong KongU, Centrefor AsianStudies, 1977.

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