Golden Chicken
One late evening in an ATM booth Kam (Sandra Ng)
gets accidentally locked in with a thief (Eric Tsang) who has been driven
to the edge of desperation due to the bad economic times that have hit
Hong Kong square in the face like a sucker punch. In an attempt to calm
him down, give him hope and get them through the long night, Kam acts as
a modern day Scherazade and relates to him the story of her life. In the
episodic narration of her story and profession (prostitution), she also
incorporates the ups and downs of an ever-changing Hong Kong. To some degree
Kam is symbolic of this gritty resilient city that has learned to adapt
to events such as the stock market crashes, Tiananmen Square, emigration
and the Handover with stoic resolve.
Beginning with the entry into her profession at
the young age of fifteen, Kam strings together various small interludes
in her life that are by turn comical, wistful, hopeful and touching. It
all adds up to a bittersweet portrait of someone getting through life as
best as they can. In the background of her story always lies the character
of Hong Kong – the tawdry massage parlors, the steaming hot pots, the rainy
days, the constant chattering, the late night drinking games, the breathing
of a city finding its way through two decades of change. From 1979 to the
new millennium we witness Kam go from a pimply-faced “chick” to "Golden
Chicken" status with an ever-thickening layer of rouge applied as she gets
older. She begins in the “fish ball girl joints” where men grope women’s
breasts in the shadows and later moves on to the glitzy years in an upscale
hostess bar to the slow decline in a chicken’s professional career – to
low rent massage parlors and finally to an apartment solo-bordello operation.
This aspect of her life is never judged harshly
– it’s simply life and you make the best of it. As she tells Eric “What
is tragic about it? I’ve met a lot of interesting people and sure had a
lot of fun”. What really has a poignant yearning sadness to it that slowly
grows during the narration is simply the inevitable passing of time – of
friends made and friends lost, of youth fading into middle age, of birth
and death, of a city of hope slowly changing to one of despair – of times
that can never be recaptured except in your memories. By the end we feel
as if we have gone on a journey with this woman to the mid-point of her
life – optimistic to the end and a never say die glint in her eye. The
almost Christmas like payoff miracle to this fairy tale has a wonderfully
sweet and sentimental ring to it.
It is hard to imagine any actress in Hong Kong
being able to do this role but Sandra Ng – she is simply wonderful here
as she goes back and forth between humor and pathos and again establishes
herself as perhaps the finest actress in that film industry. Admittedly
she isn’t particularly convincing at fifteen, but she plays those scenes
broadly – but as she ages she gains a sense of world-weary dignity that
hangs on her like a badge of honor. The comical bits are easy for Sandra
– she has done them in a hundred movies – but it is in the quieter reflective
scenes where we can see straight into her heart that pull us into her life
and make us care about her.
The film has a number of enjoyable cameos – Andy
Lau as himself, Tony Leung Ka-fai in an almost unrecognizable role as a
horny bucktoothed professor, Eason Chan as a client with peculiar tastes,
Alfred Cheung as her doctor, Chapman To as one of her bosses – we also
get to see a very young Chow Yun Fat, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-wai
on the TV playing in the background. Starring as Kam’s Aunt who teaches
her how to properly use her diaphragm to moan convincingly is Irene Tsui
who also played the Aunt in Comrades a Love Story and was a beautiful actress
in Hollywood earlier in her career.
This is a good film – I had been expecting it
to be more of a comedy but though it has amusing aspects, it is really
a thoughtful character study of a very ordinary person in perhaps a not
very ordinary profession. There is no real plot per se and there is no
focused drama – just points along the way that explain who you are. In
a similar way to Just One Look, the film seems to look back longingly at
a Hong Kong in the past – these are films that almost appear to be saying
“lets celebrate what Hong Kong used to be – lets look back before we go
forward” and in a society that has always been on the run, these moments
of nostalgic reflection and celebration make one sense that we are catching
HK at a turning point in it’s always changing life.
My rating for this film: 8.0