Lazy Hazy Crazy

同班同学

Hong Kong, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 98 mins.

Director: Lu Yixin 陆以心.

Rating: 6/10.

Chick-flick about high-school BFFs is jazzed up with lots of sex-talk, female nudity and softcore tease.

STORY

Hong Kong, the present day. High-school students Su Keyi (Mai Zhiyi) and Lin Wanjing (Guo Yixin) have been friends since childhood, and been recently joined by fellow pupil He Ai’ai (Liao Ziyu) following a bullying incident. The outgoing Su Keyi and He Ai’ai have bonded strongly, making the shy Lin Wanjing somewhat jealous of the latter. Things aren’t helped by the fact that Lin Wanjing holds a torch for handsome, sporty fellow student Chen Anqi (Xie Xiejun), to whom Su Keyi and He Ai’ai also come on playfully. Born in Malaysia, and with her father (Lu Huiguang) in Bangkok and mother in Ipoh, He Ai’ai lives alone and provides sex for money via a mobile-phone app to help pay her way. She’s also helped Su Keyi in the same business, further alienating Lin Wanjing. One day He Ai’ai invites Su Keyi to her home and says she can sleep over anytime she wants during the summer holidays. Lin Wanjing buys a puppy for company but her grandmother (Shao Yinyin) forbids it in the flat. He Ai’ai offers to keep the puppy at her house, and that night all three girls sleep over together. During the night, He Ai’ai thinks her tampon has disappeared inside her; Su Keyi offers to investigate and starts to turn her on. During the night He Ai’ai starts kissing the sleeping Su Keyi in bed. One day He Ai’ai’s father turns up unexpectedly and tries to convince her to come back to Bangkok with him; he says he’s also aware of her commercial sexual activities. He Ai’ai rejects his proposal. Feeling more than ever cut out, Lin Wanjing pleads with Su Keyi to take her along to a sex party thrown by mama-san Rita (Yang Shimin), and ends up going home with the wealthy Raymond (Wang Zongyao), with whom she develops a regular business relationship. Meanwhile, Lin Wanjing continues to see Chen Anqi, who treats her as just a friend. Her grandmother finds contraceptive pills at home and bawls her out for keeping bad company. Lin Wanjing later sees He Ai’ai and Chen Anqi having sex. This also temporarily puts a strain between He Ai’ai and Su Keyi, and then threatens the three girls’ whole friendship when a video is circulated and Lin Wanjing gives vent to her bottled-up jealousies.

REVIEWS

Three high-school BFFs play together, bathe together and spat together in Lazy Hazy Crazy 同班同学, basically a chick-flick jazzed up with sex-talk, female nudity and lots of unlikely plot developments. As an extended slice of softcore tease and provocative material – the girls also moonlight as sex workers – it’s an entertaining directorial debut by Hong Kong’s Lu Yixin 陆以心, a regular writer for director Peng Haoxiang 彭浩翔 [Pang Ho-cheung] (Love in the Buff 春娇与志明, 2012; Vulgaria 低俗喜剧, 2012; Women Who Flirt 撒娇女人最好命, 2014; plus comedy SDU: Sex Duties Unit 飞虎出征, 2013), thanks to lively playing by its three leads, mobile photography by Qiu Zhongye 邱中业 (Big Blue Lake 大蓝湖, 2011), tight editing by the experienced Li Dongquan 李栋全 [Wenders Li] and a perky score by Peng regulars Huang Ailun 黄艾伦 [Alan Wong] and Weng Weiying 翁玮盈 [Janet Yung]. But like many productions by Peng, who takes a creative producer 监制 credit here, it’s far less than the sum of its parts, with little to say at the end of the day, apart from how volatile and shallow teenage female friendships can be. Really.

Claiming to be inspired by true events, the script by Lu and a certain Zhao Lv Mengzi 赵吕梦子, from an original story by Lu and Mainland-born, Hong Kong-based TVD writer Wu Zhimo 吴沚默, is a Janus affair, partly about girly jealousies and partly about a practice that’s euphemistically known in the territory as “compensated dating” 援交 (self-organised sex-for-shopping-money, usually by teenagers). To its credit, the film takes no moral stance on the practice, apart from one scene in which one of the girls’ grandmother (veteran Shao Yinyin 邵音音 [Susan Shaw] in full grumpy mode) makes her strip naked. And when having a frank chat among themselves about their “first time” for money, one girl is more horrified that her friend started smoking, than having paid sex, at the age of 14. Very much along the lines of Pang’s own films, there’s a jokey strain throughout the movie that doesn’t raise an eyebrow at any of the goings-on.

It’s in the girls’ relationship between themselves that the film shows its pulpy origins. The falling-outs are transient and the re-bondings equally transient; it’s symptomatic of the whole script that, after the biggest spat, the trio are brought together by their cute little puppy going missing. Lu and her two co-writers don’t seem able to take the main dramatic thread – the jealousy that the shy member of the trio feels at a newcomer bonding with her best friend – to the next level. She simmers behind spectacles and, to gain “acceptance”, even joins the other two in compensated dating before taking a typical millennial’s revenge. At the end of the day, the story of three apparently independent spirits basically revolves around sexual jealousies over the school’s basketball pin-up.

The film works best as a slice of softcore tease, as the script moves the girls from one risque or unlikely situation to another: full frontals in the showers, jokey talk in a group bath about the taste of cum, one girl inspecting another’s vagina to find a “missing” tampon, and so on. Along the way, Pang’s pals pop up in jokey cameos: Japanese AV star Aoi Sora 苍井空 as a beer promo girl speaking Mandarin, director Zeng Guoxiang 曾国祥 [Derek Tsang] in drag as a cafe owner, Chen Yining 陈逸宁 as a mama-san, Shanghai-born actress-model Chen Jing 陈静 (sex starlet Popping Candy in Vulgaria) as one of the girls’ elder sister, and so on. In fact, if any of Pang’s other movies is a cousin to Lazy Hazy Crazy, it’s Vulgaria.

Among the lead trio, whose actual ages at the time ranged from 19 to 25, the most striking performance comes from the youngest, half-Korean model Guo Yixin 郭奕芯, as the shy one whose confusion causes all the trouble. Believable behind glasses, totally assured in her nude scenes, and playing a range of millennial emotions, Guo kind of binds the movie together in a quiet way. The oldest actress, willowy Malaysian Chinese Liao Ziyu 廖子妤 – then best known for her role as a drop-out in low-budget thriller Doomsday•Party 末日派对 (2013) – floats through the film as she usually does, the only really independent spirit in the story but an enigma till the end. Between the two, Mai Zhiyi 麦芷谊, in her big-screen debut, has the most extrovert role but is the least shaded of the three.

The Chinese title simply means “Fellow Students”, and should obviously not be confused with the 1981 Taiwan high-school movie Fellow Students 同班同学, directed by Lin Qingjie 林清介.

CREDITS

Presented by Sun Entertainment Culture (HK). Produced by Making Film Productions (HK).

Script: Zhao Lv Mengzi, Lu Yixin. Original story: Wu Zhimo, Lu Yixin. Photography: Qiu Zhongye. Editing: Li Dongquan [Wenders Li]. Music: Huang Ailun [Alan Wong], Weng Weiying [Janet Yung]. Theme song: Daniela Andrade. Vocal: Daniela Andrade. uolin. Sound: Guo Zhiwen, Du Duzhi, Du Zegang. Visual effects: Wang Yinghao. Executive direction: Liang Guohui.

Cast: Liao Ziyu (He Ai’ai/Alice), Mai Zhiyi (Su Keyi/Chloe), Guo Yixin (Lin Wanjing/Tracy), Wang Zongyao (Raymond), Xie Xiejun (Chen Anqi/Andrew), Chen Jing (Lin Wanjing’s elder sister), Shao Yinyin [Susan Shaw] (Lin Wenjing’s grandmother), Cai Jie (basketball-court female student), Aoi Sora (beer promo girl), Lu Huiguang [Ken Lo] (He Ai’ai’s father), Zeng Guoxiang [Derek Tsang] (Madame Glaze, Maid cafe owner), Chen Yining (Suki, mama-san), Xu Tianyou (Maid cafe manager), Li Shiyi (delivery man), Yang Shimin (Rita, mama-san), Chen Yilan (model at party), Guo Yiling (Bee), Lin Zhaoxia (PE teacher), Wen Zhang Yongmei (He Aiai’s grandmother).

Premiere: Tokyo Film Festival (Asian Future), 24 Oct 2015.

Release: Hong Kong, 29 Oct 2915.