"Crossing Hennessy"

I can now tell you there is something beyond-strange seeing the setting for your own real life as a metaphor in fiction.

Have you seen "Crossing Hennessy" yet?  It's the new Hong Kong film getting bad reviews it totally doesn't deserve because it's cute and charming and very very French in feel despite being completely Hong Kong in the deepest sense of the word and reveling in the most incredible sense of place.

And it's set in Wan Chai on the very streets where we live.  These exact streets. "Our Home as Someone Else's Metaphor". It's so odd.  It's a coming-of-age film where the guy "crosses Hennessy Road" to OUR side of the street to symbolise his accepting adulthood with all it's duties and responsibilities and stuff like that. Quite odd because I know very well that OUR side of the street doesn't make you a grown-up in the slightest.

Let me see if I can find it:



See the opening?  That's the view from our window.  Southorn Park. And I know that very cockatoo very well too. And the hero lives on St Francis Street just up the road where we frequently eat, and at the end he gets beaten up on Wedding Card Street and that's also right outside our window.  In fact, it's like the entire film - apart from the jail, obviously, and the Lost Love's studio which is just up from our friend Richard's studio in Chai Wan - takes place right outside our home.  And to such a huge extent too. Like, the place where the hero's aunty betrays her sister takes place at our own fruit-seller's shop. And while she's buying fruit from our own fruit-seller too, which we do almost daily.  And the symbolism for the girl showing she rejects convention is depicted by her standing right outside the entrance to Southorn Park where we've stood so many times ourselves.

Bizarre.

All the reviewers dislike it because they say it isn't vastly intelligent like all other Ivy Ho films, but it seems very astute to me.  In fact, I should tell you the story to make you agree with me:

Peter Pan Boy turns 40.  Bullying-Mum arranges his marriage.  Boy meets Fiancee. Boy dislikes Fiancee. Fiancee dislikes Boy.  Fiancee walks out. Bullying-Mum continues to arrange marriage. Boy mourns for Past Lost Love. Fiancee mourns for Thug-Triad-Boyfriend in jail. Boy bumps into Fiancee in a cafe. Mysterious Cantonese-speaking Indian appears.  Boy and Fiancee both discover they love mysteries and novels.  They also share a sense of humour.  They laugh. They part.  Life goes on. Lost Love wants Boy back. Thug-Triad-Boyfriend gets out of jail.  Fiancee realises she doesn't actually like Thug-Triad-Boyfriend.  Boy realises he doesn't really like Lost Love.  Mysterious Cantonese-speaking Indian appears again.  Boy and Fiancee panic over arranged marriage so finally tell parents they don't want to marry. They meet up again. Laugh again.  Talk about mysteries and novels again. Laugh some more.  They fight. They part. Thug-Triad-Boyfriend tracks down Boy. Thug-Triad-Boyfriend threatens Boy.  Boy finally stands up to Thug-Triad-Boyfriend. Thug-Triad-Boyfriend beats boy up. Mysterious Cantonese-speaking Indian appears.  Boy runs down Wedding Card Street.  Fiancee cries on skybridge over Glouster Road.

Then Boy crosses Hennessy Road and they meet again in a cafe on Johnstone Road and have another funny and silly conversation. And then boy sees the Mysterious Cantonese-speaking Indian being bullied by his own mother. And that's the end of the film.

I ask you, how is that NOT an intelligent film? I guess what the reviewers mean by "not intelligent" is that it's lighthearted, hilarious, charming, smart, witty and really very very beautiful.

And I don't think that it's just me being biased because, oh boy, they do everything we do and eat where we eat and the film's peopled with the same people who people our own lives, except for the Mysterious Cantonese-speaking Indian. So it's everything we know and love around us, so what's not to love about that.

So do go to see it and tell me if it's just me or if it hits you where you live too.