The Death Curse (Soi Cheang,2003)

One would hope that a Twins horror-comedy directed by Soi Cheang would resembles a Soi Cheang film more than a Twins film, but no such luck here. It seems even good directors need to pay the bills or at least try to stretch their abilities from time to time. This time it is a matter of combine some ghost horror with comedy hijinks by the film’s adorable leads Charlene Choi and Gillian Chung and an assortment of good looking forgettable guys. The very Scooby Doo-like plot has all the seven sons (from multiple mothers) from a recent deceased man being forced to stay together for a week  in his house to get their share of the inheritance and their slow realization that the place is haunted. Choi and Chung are at their respectively precious and sweet worse and pretty much everyone else barely register. Cheang is able to throw the occasional creep image, but the overall tone is so light that does moments disrupt the film more than help it.

Fantasia (Wai Ka Fai,2004)

Hong Kong cinema exists in a state of sustained aesthesis, a cinema forever haunted by the idea of its now lost popularity. A popular cinema without an audience done by people that still remember the better days of packed houses, larger production and bigger stars. It is an ideal cinema for nostalgia trips that just happens to exist in a place that seems dedicated to live in a constant now.  Milkyway Image whole mission is try to break this and if Fantasia is Wai Ka Fai better film as a director it has a lot to do with how it gets to heart of this feeling.

Pitched somewhere between a nostalgia trip and Johnnie To exercises in genre renewal, Fantasia is made of characters and parts from other early 60-70’s films. Lau Ching Wan plays a Michael Hui type that runs a detective agency (like in The Private Eyes) with Louis Koo (who was born to play Sam Hui) and very Ricky Hui-like Jordan Chan. Out of a genie bottle shows up harrypotterish wizard Cecilia Cheung (the ghost of Hollywood present?) that easily takes the identity of Josephine Siao’s Plain Jane. And there’s Francis Ng criminal Shek Kin type in which Ng mugs and chews the scenery as if in his shoulders laid a whole Hong Kong Cinema tradition. One can’t quite describe Fantasia’s plot which is virtual incomprehensible if one is not versed in Cantonese Cinema tradition, but that is precisely the point.

Like most of Wai Ka Fai’s films Fantasia’s charms are very conceptual in nature like its use of popstars like the Twins and Shine in supporting role turning a big staple of current Hong Kong Cinema in just a foundation piece on his game of elaborate homage to the past. There is also no surprise that the film own bit of deliberate parody of American Cinema (itself a large tradition in current wacky HK comedies) is to Jurassic Park, the film whose success along with Speed start  Hollywood’s dominance in the local market, that gets here a very intentional and literal low brow sheen.

Fantasia is a parody, homage and something of an inquiry on the viability of Popular Cantonese Cinema pre 1980 in the current age. That its titled Fantasia and uses deliberate use of wizards and wishes is certainly no accident. The film wouldn’t work if its whole cast was not very game and if they and Wai Ka Fai were not in synch in how the film is playing with iconography. Fantasia could be a likable silly nostalgia trip but it claims its own vigor and energy. As one sees Lau Ching Wan and Cecilia Cheung play acting past idols, Fantasia locates vitality in give those old icons new bodies. It does achieve its own sort of renewal.