GIMME GIMME
Reviewed by YTSL
From the 24th Hong Kong International Film
Festival’s “1999-2000 Hong Kong Panorama” (The Hong Kong Leisure and Cultural
Services Department, 2000:19):-
Interviewer Sam Ho: “You were an outsider
all your life, growing up in South Africa, studying in Hong Kong and then
the U.S. And your best films are docudramas with outsider perspectives.
A result of that experience?”
Director Lawrence Ah Mon (AKA Lawrence Lau):
“I think definitely. I didn’t grow up in Hong Kong and I don’t belong
to those worlds. You can say I’m a voyeur, trying to understand society
through exploration. It’s also practical, because the life around
me is not interesting and this is the only way for me to understand other
lifestyles.”
Thus far, I’ve only viewed four of Lawrence
Ah Mon’s celluloid offerings (For the record, these are: “Queen of Temple
Street”, a prostitute drama that features great performances from Sylvia
Chang and Rain Lau; “Three Summers”, set in the Lantau Island fishing village
of Tai O and its environs; “Spacked Out”, a documentary like work which
centers on the activities of five young female live-wires; and GIMME GIMME,
another social dramatic effort whose seven main teen-aged characters all
struggle with understanding and appreciating the joys and burdens of young
love and true friendship). However, doing so has served to convince
me that as long as individuals like him continue to be a part of the HKSAR’s
film industry, hope and humanity will be resident in their world and products.
My reason for stating this stems in large part from this (currently, as
of 2001) 42 year old Pretoria-born auteur’s ability to people his movies
with realistic appearing -- and acting -- characters and cast a strong,
yet far from overly harsh, light on the kind of folks that would be easily
dismissed by less tolerant others as delinquent or low-life scum.
Five of GIMME GIMME’s primary characters -- Lobo,
Skid, Soda (whose can be heard being less generically referred to as Sarsi,
the name of a popular sarsaparilla flavored drink in Hong Kong and elsewhere
in South-East Asia), Fion and Suki – are fast friends who all attend the
same mixed-gender secondary school. Not only do they stand apart
from “the establishment” because of their being restless and not particularly
conventionally attired and coifed – Fion has bright orange hair, Skid has
two ring-filled holes in one of his earlobes, Soda’s head is almost but
not entirely shaven -- teenagers but they also are the offspring of the
less moneyed members of society, one of whom is a man jailed on corruption
charges. While they seem more law-abiding than the younger lead personalities
of Lawrence Ah Mon’s edgier feeling “Spacked Out”, Lobo and co. are
not adverse to doing such as publicly tease and embarrass others in the
name of fun (e.g., when they play a “pick up” game that involves their
going up to same and different gendered strangers and pretending to be
interested in asking them out for a date) or lifting a few hundred dollar
notes from the wallets and purses of their parents to finance their karaoke
sessions, rave party and other jaunts.
Although Pat (or Siu Pak, as she is also referred
to) looks more clean-cut than the group -- from a different school but
who are co-users of a sports practice area -- that she befriends, she is
soon shown to be no complete innocent or saint herself. However,
this is not at all to say that they are particularly dishonorable and unruly
youth. Indeed, upon witnessing the emotional support they easily
give one another and hearing the kind of sage advice that they share (e.g.,
“it’s no use to work on something that’s not working” and “learn to treasure
your girlfriend” along with a girl’s needing to be showered with attention,
gifts, compliments and devotion), this (re)viewer could readily see the
good in each and everyone of GIMME GIMME’s not entirely untroubled characters
plus understand why it is that each member of this social group would value
the friendship and company of the others in it.
As seems to be the wont and habit of more than
just teenagers though, GIMME GIMME’s main personalities are often much
more astute at dispensing advice to -- and mediating between -- their friends
and their friends’ lovers than conducting their own affairs and dealing
with their own needs. Inevitably, this leads to the existence of
love triangles in their lives along with some two, triple and more timing
of “pang yau” (a word in Cantonese that translates as friend but can carry
stronger connotations than that). In an age and a territory where
cellular phones abound and long-distance travel is something many people
do, relationships and the quest to find – plus keep -- true love can be
very far flung as well as complicated. Despite some questioning of
“why be so serious at our age?” and assertions that “it’s just a game”,
even the coolest personae find themselves becoming emotional victims of
love rather than just their hormones.
It is a major testament to Lawrence Ah Mon’s masterful
direction, Tse Loh Sze’s sensitive script and the film’s talented newcomer
cast (who include Chui Tin Yue as Lobo, Yoky Lo as Fion, Yoyo Chan Chi
Yiu as Pat, Shiu Yu Wa and Yorky Yuen Cheuk Wai), that this person – who
doesn’t usually watch teenage romance movies – got so into GIMME GIMME
and as involved as she did in the concerns of Lobo, Pat, Skid, Fion, Soda
and Mo along with the last named individual’s sometime boyfriend, Ken.
Although I am neither a teenager nor a known romantic, I don’t think I
would be remiss in stating that this surely far from big budget work seems
to be a very genuine and authentic, and therefore moving, cinematic study
of the lives of some not particularly atypical Hong Kong youth.
Like with Mr. Ah Mon’s first Milkyway Image production (“Spacked Out”),
this second one -- in as many years -- is a surprisingly affecting – yet
not at all humorless – effort that I’m very glad to see the likes of producer
Johnnie To having lent his support to bring to fruition.
My rating for this film: 7.5