Floating City

浮城

Hong Kong, 2012, colour, 2.35:1, 105 mins.

Director: Yan Hao 严浩 [Yim Ho].

Rating: 6/10.

Ambitious drama about a Hong Kong outsider’s identity is flawed but worthwhile.

STORY

Hong Kong, 1942. The orphaned baby of a drowned Chinese woman is adopted by a family of tanka 蛋家, aka boat dwellers. Fifty years later, he has grown into Bu Huaquan (Guo Fucheng), married to his adoptive tanka cousin Di (Yang Caini) and with a daughter and young son. As the first Chinese taipan of the powerful Imperial East India Shipping Company, which helped shape the colony, Bu Huaquan has been invited to a swanky party thrown by the new governor of Hong Kong, but Di, who doesn’t feel comfortable at such get-togethers, ducks out. Instead, Bu Huaquan is accompanied by a close business friend, Chinese American Fion Huang (Liu Xinyou). But Bu Huaquan knows he is actually half-Caucasian, and is plagued by doubts over his cultural identity. His thoughts go back to being raised by his adoptive parents (He Chaoyi, Yuan Fuhua) on one of the many tanka boats in Hong Kong’s harbour, alongside other siblings and the young Di. When his adoptive father died in the late 1950s, he became head of the family; but poverty forced his mother (Bao Qijing) to give away his younger siblings. In the early 1960s, aged 21, he joined Imperial East India Shipping as a part-time office boy, as he could read and write, and spent his evenings furthering his education. By chance he got to know the company’s sympathetic head, Greg (Gregory Charles Rivers), while his boss, the racist Dick Callahan (David Peatfield), was away; subsequently, he met the wealthy Fion Huang when Greg entrusted him with a business contract for her father after Dick Callahan was sacked for mismanagement. Fion Huang, who liked him, took him under her wing, grooming him to meet the colony’s rich and famous. Bu Huaquan rose through the ranks as the UK reached an agreement in 1982 to hand Hong Kong back to China. But as the handover approaches, he is still plagued by doubts over his own and his real parents’ identities.

REVIEW

It’s been a shakey decade or more for Hong Kong New Wave veteran Yan Hao 严浩 [Yim Ho] who, since Kitchen 我爱厨房 (1997), has made only the failed, English-language Pavilion of Women 庭院里的女人 (2001), the chaotic A West Lake Moment 鸳鸯蝴蝶 (2005) and a 40-part TV period drama about Shanghai songbird Zhou Xuan 周璇 (天涯歌女, 2008), starring Hong Kong actress Zhang Bozhi 张柏芝 [Cecilia Cheung]. Now 60, Yan finally finds his feet again with Floating City 浮城, a drama of personal identity set in his native Hong Kong and centred on a mixed-race Chinese orphan who rises through the ranks as the colony heads towards its handback to China.

An ambitious undertaking which mixes history, identity, family melodrama and cultural politics, as well as dealing with the rarely-covered topic of Hong Kong harbour’s “boat dwellers” (the so-called tanka 蛋家 ethnic group), the movie is stronger when focusing on family drama than when making broader points about rootlessness (often clunkily signposted by the hero asking himself “who am I?”). Unfortunately, Hong Kong’s Guo Fucheng 郭富城 [Aaron Kwok], an actor who’s consistently tried to broaden his range by accepting more challenging roles between commercial assignments, is not only miscast physically as half-Caucasian hero Bu Huaquan but also fails to make the character spring to life. In a smallish, underwritten role as his tanka wife, Yang Caini 杨采妮 [Charlie Young] is much more affecting, while the film’s real acting laurels go to veteran Bao Qijing 鲍起静 [Paw Hee-ching] (The Way We Are 天水围的日与夜, 2008) as the older version of the lead’s adoptive mother.

Based on true stories gathered by Yan himself, the movie is often caught between being a chronicle of Hong Kong’s recent colonial past and a study of a man who seems like a perpetual outsider, with both strands never comfortably melding. Bu Huaquan’s “in-between” status is constantly stressed in the dialogue and voiceovers: to Hong Kongers he’s a piece of flotsam, to snooty western colonials he’s a “half-breed”, to passport control he’s not really British, and to himself he’s an adoptee of the tanka community. However, the script too often resorts to obvious characters and situations to mirror this: a sneering manager at a powerful colonial company (gratingly played by an Australian, David Peatfield), a sympathetic boss used for dramatic balance (better played by fellow Australian Gregory Charles Rivers, with a British accent), a predatory Chinese American woman (Liu Xinyou 刘心悠 [Annie Liu], one-note posey), and a bottom-line landlord (Lu Zhenshun 鲁振顺) who later grovels when Bu Huaquan has become successful.

Despite these major flaws, the film still has its moments, especially in the final 15 minutes – a moving assembly of simple scenes between Bu Huaquan and his mother and, after her death, between him and his wife. Those scenes, and the early ones of Bu Huaquan growing up in 1950s and 1960s Hong Kong, have a natural warmth that’s delicately underscored by the copious music of Yan Ling 严羚 (Yan Hao’s musician son, who also acted in A West Lake Moment). Throughout, too, the photography of Hong Kong d.p. Lin Guohua 林国华 [Ardy Lam] beautifully evokes everyday life in the colony, with much use of close-ups to heighten involvement, as well as to get round budget limitations in period scenes.

CREDITS

Presented by Sil-Metropole Organisation (HK), Mandarin Films Distribution (HK). Produced by by Sil-Metropole Organisation (HK), Mandarin Films Distribution (HK).

Script: Yan Hao [Yim Ho], Pang Xiangyi. Original story: Li Hua’an, Lu Jinquan, Fang Xiaolan, Chen Jilin. Photography: Lin Guohua [Ardy Lam]. Editing: Tan Guoming. Music: Yan Ling. Production design: Huang Jialun. Costumes: Zheng Xiuxian. Sound: Yan Ling. Visual effects: Chen Yonggang, Wang Hu, Tian Xu, Yin Xiwen.

Cast: Guo Fucheng [Aaron Kwok] (Bu Huaquan), Yang Caini [Charlie Young] (Di, Bu Huaquan’s wife), Bao Qijing [Paw Hee-ching] (Bu Huaquan’s adoptive mother, older), He Chaoyi [Josie Ho] (Bu Huaquan’s adoptive mother, younger), Liu Xinyou [Annie Liu] (Fion Huang), Zheng Jiaxing (young Bu Huaquan), Lu Zhenshun (Zhang, landlord), Chen Yongquan (priest), Yuan Fuhua (Bu Huaquan’s adoptive father), Gregory Charles Rivers (Greg), Liang Zuyao (Liu Chaoli, Bu Huaquan’s friend), David Peatfield (Dick Callahan).

Release: Hong Kong, 19 May 2012.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 28 Nov 2012.)