Ten Years

十年

Hong Kong, 2015, colour/b&w, 1.66:1/16:9/2.35:1, 103 mins.

Directors: Guo Zhen 郭臻 (I), Huang Feipeng 黄飞鹏 (II), Ou Wenjie 欧文杰 [Jevons Au] (III), Zhou Guanwei 周冠威 (IV), Wu Jialiang 伍嘉良 (V).

Rating: 3/10.

Very local, agit-proppy collection of shorts is too simplistic, and hardly worth the slog.

STORY

Hong Kong. I: Extras 浮瓜. To push through a proposed National Security Law, a former police commissioner (Hong Zixun), on orders from above, has convened a secret council to stage an attempted assassination attempt on two LegCo members (Lin Qiaozi, Zeng Wenwei) visiting a charity giveaway of free rice at a school on Labour Day, 1 May 2020. The commissioner has delegated the action to a gang boss (Xu Peidao), who has brought in two triads, the unemployed Hairy (Lishahua) and Pakistani Peter (Chen Bida), as gunmen. II: Season of the End 冬蝉. Two “modern taxidermists” (Huang Jing, Liu Haozhi) are preserving specimens of anything that is disappearing, including the house of a friend, Eddie, that has been bulldozed. Then Huang Jing starts to preserve her own colleague, starting with his hair and sweat. III: Dialect 方言. In 2020 China decreed that Mandarin would be the sole official language. All taxi drivers would have to sit a proficiency test and those failing it would have to put a sign on their taxi and be banned from picking up passengers at certain entry points. By 2025 taxi driver Han (Liang Jianping) is still struggling to learn Mandarin, which his wife (Li Jieming) and young son (Shi Huijie) already use. More and more he finds it difficult to get by in his job. IV: Self-Immolator 自焚者. In spring 2025 a body is found self-immolated outside the British Consulate-General building. The corpse is thought to be that of a supporter of Ouyang Jianfeng (Wu Zhaoxian), a supporter of the Hong Kong independence movement who recently died, aged 21, after a hunger strike in prison. Following Ouyang Jianfeng’s death, social chaos had ensued, and one young man (Huang Wenze) had been inspired to become a second martyr to the movement. V: Local Egg 本地蛋. Shop owner Sen (Liao Qizhi) hears his friend Xiang (Huang Qingnan) is closing Hong Kong’s sole remaining chicken farm and moving to Taiwan. Sen collects a last consignment of eggs from him and sells them as usual as “local eggs”. But then his young son Ming (Xu Yuming), who is a member of the Youth Guard 少年军, is instructed that the word “local” 本地 is now officially banned in the territory.

REVIEW

The nearest thing that Hong Kong has come to agit-prop film-making for a long time, Ten Years 十年 is a wildly uneven compendium of five shorts – most set in 2025 – that take a simplistic, dystopian view of the territory’s future halfway through the 50-year handover to China that started in 1997. Despite winning several local awards, the independent, often vociferously anti-China production is an intensely local undertaking that preaches to the converted rather than arguing its ideas with any depth or objectivity. Only one episode – by writer-director Ou Wenjie 欧文杰 [Jevons Au], an alumnus of director-producer Du Qifeng 杜琪峰 [Johnnie To] – shows an ability to take the brief and transmute it into something cinematic. Unfortunately it’s the shortest segment of all, a 12-minute oasis of wit and irony amid 103 minutes of often preposterous, one-note fist-waving.

Ou worked on the scripts of Du’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart 单身男女 (2011) and Romancing in Thin Air 高海拔之恋II (2012) before recently co-directing the multi-stranded gangster movie Triviṣa 树大招风 (2016), produced by Du. His segment, Dialect 方言, cheekily imagines a Hong Kong a few years hence where Mandarin is the sole official language and taxi drivers have to take a proficiency test; those who fail have to stick a sign on their cabs and are banned from picking up fares at various key points. As one driver – suitably named Han 汉 (“Chinese”) – struggles to learn it despite being pushed by his wife and young son – the latter named Gangsheng 港生 (“born in Hong Kong”) – a mini-comic allegory on the theme of change or die develops as Han finds business dropping. “Once we had to learn English to get a job; now it’s Mandarin,” says one character. Though the idea conveniently forgets the territory’s history of adaptability in so many areas (including language and dialects), Ou keeps it bouncing along with several bitter-sweet vignettes (comically peppered with pinyin intertitles) that make one wish he’d developed it just a tad farther.

The only other film-maker with commercial experience, writer-director Zhou Guanwei 周冠威 (surrogate-mother drama A Complicated Story 一个复杂故事, 2013) fares way less well with his segment Self-Immolator 自焚者, a 25-minute farrago about martyrs for a Hong Kong independence movement that is tearing the territory apart in 2025. Less scattergun but similarly dystopian-futuristic to no point, Local Egg 本地蛋, by first-timer Wu Jialiang 伍嘉良 (initiator of the whole project), imagines the territory being patrolled by schoolkid Red Guards (called Youth Guards 少年军) looking for banned words, among which is “local” – an ironic idea done without a trace of irony.

That closing story is as blinkered anti-China as the opener, Extras 浮瓜 (literally, “Floating Melons”), by Guo Zhen 郭臻, who has several shorts under his belt but here is the only director to take no credit for the script. Shot in B&W, it imagines a staged assassination attempt of two LegCo members in 2020 to create panic and thus force through a National Security Law. The story has a mild underbelly of social comment (unemployment etc.) but is otherwise peopled by one-dimensional cut-outs. The only segment which is not overtly political, Season of the End 冬蝉 (literally, “Winter Cicada”) by first-timer Huang Feipeng 黄飞鹏, is a dreamy, irreal meditation on “preservation” that is also unbelievably pretentious and – at 26 minutes – unfortunately the longest.

Technical quality is generally good, with Ou’s segment the most professional overall and the two widescreen segments (Season and Egg) well composed. Following its premiere at the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival in Nov 2015, the film opened commercially in mid-Dec on one screen and soon expanded to others. By the time it was pulled from its one remaining screen in Feb 2016, it had grossed 10 times its budget of HK$500,000.

CREDITS

Presented by Ten Years Studio (HK). Produced by Breakthrough (II), 109G Studio (III), Four Parts Production (IV).

Script: Liang Peipei, Zhong Zhufeng (I); Huang Jing, Huang Feipeng (II); Ou Wenjie, He Fenglin, Zhong Cuiyi, Yang Shilu (III); Zhou Guanwei (IV); Wu Jialiang (V). Photography: Mai Zhikun (I, III); Liu Zijian (II); He Chaoyuan (IV); Wu Jiaxian (V). Editing: Guo Zhen (I); Huang Feipeng (II); Chen Jiaxuan (III); Li Minzhi, Zhou Guanwei (IV); Wu Jialiang (V). Music: J.S. Bach (I); Kashiwa Daisuke (II); Ye Haowen (III); Yang Zhichao (IV). Art direction: Zhang Dianlan (I); Ma Yongyu (II); He Fenglin (III); Xu Yazhi (IV); Cai Jieling (V). Costumes: Chen Xia’er (I); Cai Jieling (V). Sound: Chen Zhifeng (I, III); Wang Zhenhai (II); Chen Yingwei (IV); Luo Haowen (V).

Cast: I: Lishahua [Zerisawa/Courtney Wu] (Changmao/Hairy), Chen Bida (Peter), Xu Peidao (Zhao/Bill, gang boss), Wang Hongwei (Zhang Kunxiang), Chen Huixian (Lin Qiongzi, True Love Union rep), Zeng Wenwei (Yang Jinhua, Fortune Party rep), Huang Liwei, Liang Fuxiong, Yu Dazhi, Zhang Yuanfen (councillors), Hong Zixun (former police commissioner); II: Huang Jing (Huang Jing), Liu Haozhi (Liu Haozhi); III: Liang Jianping (Han, taxi driver), Shi Huijie (Han Gangsheng, Han’s son), Li Jieming (Han’s wife), Xiao Yingjie (Han’s taxi-driver friend), Guan Weilun (Cantonese-speaking tourist), Cai Kangming (Mandarin-speaking taxi driver); IV: Wu Zhaoxuan (Ouyang Jianfeng/Amos), Huang Wenze (Karen’s boyfriend), Tanzela Qoser (Karen), Zhang Bingquan (Guo Cunfu/David, academic), He Feng (Li Zongyan/Thomas, LegCo member), Huang Zexiong (stall owner), Cao Yingfa (Ruan Xin/Joe, news commentator), Yuan Fuhua (Wei Zhizhong/Bruce, author), Chen Guifen (Chen Meilan/Tammy, human-rights campaigner), Liao Cuizhen (self-immolator); V: Liao Qizhi [Liu Kai-chi] (Sen/Sam, shop owner), Huang Qingnan (Xiang, egg farmer), Xu Yuming (Ming, Sen’s son), Wei Bingting (Jin, Youth Guard team leader), Lai Songxuan (bookshop owner).

Premiere: Hong Kong Asian Film Festival (Centrepiece), 15 Nov 2015.

Release: Hong Kong, 17 Dec 2015.