Sisterhood

骨妹

Hong Kong, 2016, colour, 16:9, 96 mins.

Director: Xu Xinxian 徐欣羡 [Tracy Choi].

Rating: 6/10.

Good-looking but stagey drama of a close friendship in 1990s Macau bites off more than it can chew.

STORY

Taiwan, the present day. Li Shishi (Liang Yongqi) and her husband Chen Zhong (Li Liren) run a guesthouse in the countryside. She’s an alcoholic who’s been trying to give up drink but recently fell on the stairs and sprained her arm. One day Li Shishi reads a notice in the paper that Zhang Lingling (Yu Xiangning), her old friend in Macau, has died. The last time Li Shishi saw her was at midnight on 19/20 Dec 1999, during the street celebrations for the handover to China, when she berated her for planning to send “their” two-year-old son to the Mainland for adoption – the child that both of them had raised together. Li Shishi had first met Zhang Lingling when applying for a job at a massage parlour where the latter already worked. The naive young Li Shishi had ended up assigned a room (No. 18) next to the worldly-wise Zhang Lingling (No. 19), who took her under her wing and introduced her to fellow workers Yingying (Chen Lei) and the mercurial, dyed-blonde Zhizhi (Liu Yilin). Li Shishi travels to Macau and meets the woman, Feihua, who posted the notice; she says Zhang Lingling gave up her massage job soon after Li Shishi left for Taiwan. Li Shishi next meets Yingying (Che Wanwan), who has her own massage parlour at which she employs Zhizhi (Mai Jiaqi), though the two recently had a row and Zhizhi stormed out. Li Shishi remembers her early days at the parlour and how Zhang Lingling helped her. Visiting Zhang Lingling’s flat, she recalls how she had moved in when she had to find new digs; later, when Zhang Lingling got pregnant by one of her several men friends, Li Shishi had talked her out of an abortion and promised to help her raise the child. Drunk one night, Li Shishi tracks down Lele (Li Jiawei), Zhang Lingling’s problem teenage son, but throws up before they can really talk. Later she tries to heal the rift between Yingying and Zhizhi, and also manages to befriend the prickly Lele. Li Shishi remembers how she and Zhang Lingling had raised him together as “their” baby; but then one day a young Taiwan guy, Chen Zhong (Zhu Jianran), had come into Li Shishi’s life and said he wanted to marry her and take her back to Taiwan.

REVIEW

An engaging performance by Chinese Malaysian actress-model Liao Ziyu 廖子妤 is the most notable thing about Sisterhood 骨妹, a first feature by Macau-born director Xu Xinxian 徐欣羡 [Tracy Choi] that bites off rather more than it can chew. Shuttling back and forth between the present day and 1990s Macau, the film tries to be an involving drama about a close friendship between two women and a portrait of the former Portuguese colony during the run-up to the Mainland handover but succeeds as neither and – fatally – lacks any sense of passion. Made watchable by Liao’s fresh playing as the lead’s younger self, plus Hong Kong newcomer Yu Xiangning 余香凝 as her bestest pal, Sisterhood doesn’t reach down very far emotionally.

Now 29, Xu studied film first in Taiwan and then Hong Kong. Prior to Sisterhood she made several shorts, both fiction and documentary, in all styles and pretensions, including I’m Here 出柜 (2012), about homosexual “coming out”, A Friend of Mine 坏女孩 (2014), centred on female bullying and friendship at primary school, and Farming on the Wasteland 荒芜中栽花 (2014), about three veteran Macau writers. Most of her shorts have been female-centric, so Sisterhood, which is basically about two Macau masseuses raising a child together in a de facto marriage, would seem to have been an ideal project. (The English working title was actually Sweet Home.)

That’s not quite how it’s worked out in practice. Though the setting and subject are clearly close to Xu’s heart, she takes no script credit – which goes solely to Hong Kong writer Ou Jian’er 欧健儿 [Au Kin-yee], a member of the Milkyway Image team of film-maker Du Qifeng 杜琪峰 [Johnnie To] for almost two decades, where she’s most often worked with You Naihai 游乃海 [Yau Nai-hoi]. The result is a film of missed opportunities and one that is saddled with an unwieldy structure that works against any emotional involvement

That structure is a series of flashbacks as one of the women hears of the other’s death and returns to Macau after well over a decade (the exact period is left vague) to relive her memories of their close friendship. Seemingly for commercial reasons, that friendship is never treated as more than a vague girly crush – despite having the full trappings of a lesbian-marriage-with-child – making the movie more about sisterhood, as the English title denotes. That’s all fine; but the treatment of the relationship is hardly penetrating, and more often just novelettish, with an especially ridiculous ending involving the surviving partner’s Taiwan husband (by whom she has a child). The flashback structure is made even more unwieldy by the lead performance of Hong Kong veteran Liang Yongqi 梁咏琪 [Gigi Leung]. Turning 40 at the time of shooting, she’s the right age for the part but not believable as either an older version of Liao’s character or a mother with (for some unexplained reason) a serious drink problem. Liang’s is a pristine performance with no passion – too neat, too superficial, too emotionally predictable, and never remotely involving.

Given the director’s own background and the flashback structure – plus things like the crucial break-up scene being set on the night of the Handover – the film could justifiably be expected to be also a portrait of Macau, then and now. But there’s no special Macau “feel” to the movie, either in look, atmosphere or attitudes. Local d.p. Zhang Qianwei 张倩薇 (with veteran Milkyway d.p. Zheng Zhaoqiang 郑兆强 [Cheng Siu-keung] as a consultant) creates a tidy, good-looking product but one with zero atmosphere or stylisation. Similarly, the art direction and costumes by Zhang Wen 张蚊 lack a lived-in look.

Rising above these shortcomings is the fresh, accessible performance by Liao, 26 at the time of shooting, who started her film career with an okay supporting role as a bank robber in indie Hong Kong thriller Doomsday•Party 末日派对 (2013) and has subsequently clawed her way up through a large variety of movies, from the teasy Lazy Hazy Crazy 同班同学 (2015), in which she played a sexually ambivalent BFF, to crowd-funded protest movie Pseudo Secular 风景 (2016), in which she was an imprisoned activist. In Sisterhood she’s entirely convincing as a naive but realistic teenager who learns from and later moves in with an older and more experienced colleague. Most importantly, Liao has good chemistry with actress-model Yu, 23 at the time but looking older than Liao, as that more worldly colleague. More’s the pity, then, that Ou’s screenplay didn’t focus just on the pair of them – plus Macau in the 1990s – rather than trying to create a grander structure that’s dramatically malnourished at all levels.

Among supporting roles, Hong Kong veteran Che Wanwan 车婉婉 stands out as an old friend in the present-day scenes and, along with fellow longtimer Mai Jiaqi 麦家琪 [Teresa Mak] as a more quick-tempered friend, helps to mitigate Liang’s stony performance. The film’s Chinese title, which literally means “Bone Sister(s)”, is Cantonese slang for masseuse(s), in the more dubious sense.

CREDITS

Presented by One Cool Film Production (HK), PJ One Cool Film (HK). Produced by One Cool Film Production (HK).

Script: Ou Jian’er [Au Kin-yee]. Photography: Zhang Qianwei. Photography advice: Zheng Zhaoqiang [Cheng Siu-keung]. Editing: Xu Xinxian [Tracy Choi]. Editing advice: Tina Baz. Music: Liu Zhiqiang. Art direction: Zhang Wen. Costumes: Zhang Wen. Sound: Nie Jirong.

Cast: Liang Yongqi [Gigi Leung] (older Li Shishi), Liao Ziyu (younger Li Shishi), Yu Xiangning (younger Zhang Lingling), Li Liren (older Chen Zhong), Zhu Jianran (younger Chen Zhong), Chen Lei (younger Yingying), Che Wanwan (older Yingying), Liu Yilin (younger Zhizhi/Gigi), Mai Jiaqi [Teresa Mak] (older Zhizhi/Gigi), Dino Acconci (Jian), Luis Maria Castro (Tushenglao, foodstall owner), Jiang Meiyi (Sister Li), Li Jiawei (Lele), Ai Wei (Wei), Xiaofei [Xu Zhiyong] (restaurant owner), Cheng Zhengjun (Taiwan doctor), Pang Sihao, Liu Xinning (guesthouse couple).

Premiere: Macau Film Festival (Competition), 12 Dec 2016.

Release: Hong Kong, 23 Feb 2017.