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I Sell My Womb
Thursday, Dec 4, 2008 1:43AM / Standard Entry / Members only
( 繁 | 简 )
21 commentsDec 4th, 08 South China Morning Post
Also showing: Race Wong
Vivian Chen
Dec 04, 2008
Race Wong Yuen-ling says the best thing about being an actress is that it allows her to become somebody else. Wong's CV is littered with a string of grungy, unpleasant roles, which contrast sharply with the girl-next-door image she cultivated as part of Canto-pop duo 2R.
Her role in Herman Yau Lai-to's new film True Women for Sale is a case in point. She plays Wong Lin-fa, a mainland widow pregnant with a Hong Kong man's baby - a role that most teeny-bop idols wouldn't touch with a bargepole for fear of putting their squeaky clean images at risk.
"Image wasn't an issue for me. I was only worried about whether I could do a good job in the film," says the 26-year-old (pictured). "I can be the sweet and pretty Race in my music videos." She certainly doesn't look appealing in the film: no makeup and a body suit she wears to appear pregnant.
Wong's most daunting challenge, however, was doing the scenes in which Lin-fa mistreats her three-year-old daughter. "In one scene, I was supposed to yell at her and spank her," she says. "When I grabbed her arm and she started crying, I was so afraid I might hurt her that I held back. [Co-star Anthony Wong Chau-sang] told me that I had to be true to the character regardless of what I felt about her actions, even if it meant spanking a baby. I had no other choice but to go all out - but with the child's safety a priority of course."
Wong admits it was difficult for her to get into the head of Lin-fa. "This character is totally different from who I really am. She is simple-minded, loud and straightforward, says whatever comes to her mind and is fearless when she's fighting for her own rights," the star says.
"People like Lin-fa have to sell themselves in exchange for things I already have, so who am I to judge them? Instead of looking down on them, we should respect their choices."
And they are tough choices. In Yau's piece of low-budget realist drama, Lin-fa sells her womb in Hong Kong, just as her neighbour, the drug-addled sex worker Lai Chung-chung (played by Prudence Liew Mei-kwan), trades her body for cash.
Such lifestyles are worlds away from Wong's own. Growing up in what she describes as a "happy traditional family" in Singapore, Wong - who performs alongside elder sister Rosanne Wong Yuen-kwun in 2R - says she has "the most wonderful mother" in the world. "I wish I could be half as good as she is," Wong says. "We are just so connected that she always knows what is on my mind and what's bugging me."
Wong made her screen debut in 2003 with a small role in Joe Ma Wai-ho's Sound of Colours, but it was her turn in 2004's Abnormal Beauty - in which she played a student whose obsession with photography has dire consequences - that propelled her beyond the limits of her pop music career and landed her a best new performer nomination at the Hong Kong Film Awards.
"I didn't know until one journalist asked for my comment about the nomination," she says. "I never thought I would be nominated at film awards, so just to be part of it was a great honour."
After Abnormal Beauty, Wong starred in several dramatic comedies aimed at teens, such as The Unusual Youth, Moments in Love and Cocktail. But other, more demanding roles were thrown into the mix as well, such as in the horror film Black Night and Carol Lai Miu-suet's psychological thriller The Third Eye.
Race and Rosanne - who, bizarrely, plays a secret admirer of Race's character in Abnormal Beauty - are learning martial arts for a thriller which will begin shooting next year. The sisters have also collaborated with Canadian comic-book artist Pat Lee on a science-fiction trilogy called Orius, in which the pair will be transformed into robot-killing assassins. The first book will be launched later this month and available for sale in the US next year.
"Both of us are portrayed as being in perfect shape, having superpowers and equipped with fancy hi-tech gadgets," says Wong. "Isn't it exciting?"True Women for Sale opens today
Movie review: True Women for Sale
Paul Fonoroff
Dec 04, 2008
Starring: Anthony Wong Chau-sang, Prudence Liew Mei-kwan, Race Wong Yuen-ling, Sammy Leung Chi-kin
Director: Herman Yau Lai-to
Category: IIB ***
The Chinese title of True Women for Sale - "I don't sell my body, I sell my womb" - is perhaps the most provocative aspect of this entertaining but uneven look at the local sex trade. Herman Yau's loose sequel to Whisper and Moans, one of last year's underrated treasures, shares thematic and stylistic similarities to its predecessor. But the scrīpt, again co-authored by the director and Elsa Yang Yee-shan, is so unfocused and rife with extraneous incidents that its more fun and meaningful aspects almost get lost in the process.
That they don't is a tribute to Yau's usual lack of pretensions, a fine feel for Hong Kong, and Anthony Wong. Although best known for his grizzly, over-the-top performances, Wong ranks among the screen's most versatile actors, and it's a pleasure to watch his low-key manoeuvrings as the kindhearted but not altogether altruistic insurance agent Lau Fu-yi. One of the film's cleverest bits is projecting Lau's calculator-like assessment of each new acquaintance's value in terms of estimated premiums. But there's more to him than a calculating heart, as evidenced by his interaction with Lin-fa (Race Wong), the young mainland widow of a middle-aged Lau client who she married as a way of immigrating to Hong Kong.
Now a single mother and pregnant with twins, Lin-fa lives in a Sham Shui Po tenement that is home to dozens of one-woman brothels. It's not exactly the best environment to bring up children, particularly with neighbours such as Lai Chung-chung (Prudence Liew, pictured). Lai is the movie's oddest character, a drug-addicted prostitute whose greatest shame is her rotten teeth and who raises chickens as an almost sacred duty (chicken, after all, is Cantonese slang for prostitute).
The two women illustrate the central issue alluded to in the Chinese title: whether being a whore is any less honourable than marrying and having babies for financial security. Like many Yau features, True Women for Sale is refreshing in that it doesn't shy away from social topics that are usually anathema to commercial releases. As well as its gender politics, the movie touches on residency rights for people from the mainland and the injustices facing new immigrants - subjects that fit naturally within the context.
Less germane is a major subplot involving photojournalist Chi (Sammy Leung) who is intent on getting to the roots of Lai's personal saga. Her saga is, indeed, interesting, and provides Susan Shaw Yin-yin with a poignant cameo as Lai's estranged mother. But spending so much time on Chi's professional life is superfluous and adds little to the proceedings. Equally irrelevant is the depiction of Lau's unrequited flirtations in his office, which jarringly takes him out of the movie's main milieu without adding depth to our understanding of the quirky workaholic.
The film's 90 minutes go by quickly, but the picture's real women would have been more saleable, cinematically speaking, if afforded less plot detours and more pertinent whispers and moans.
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