Movie Review: Girl$/囡囡

Jae Leungis in town, and we met up for lunch yesterday. Afterwards, while wandering the streets of Mongkok, he inquired if there were any good local movies showing.

I told him I had yet to seeGirl$/ 囡囡 , so we went to the 16:00 showing at the Golden Harvest cinema in Mong Kok (Grand Century Place, the mall over the KCR station).

A Category III film about compensated dating, Kenneth Bi’s latest film was something I’d heard a lot about and wanted to see.

I enjoyedGirl$/ 囡囡

for a lot of reasons, some prurient and others perhaps puritan.

One the one hand, there was almost immediate nudity.

A friend once said that if there is nudity or violence in the first 5 minutes of a film, it is guaranteed to be good.

I also feel this way.

To be fair, I’ve seen nudity before.

I’ll see it again.

Someday.

At least on film.

But it’s refreshing to see nudity in local films because it’s rare.

It’s also refreshing because its nudity.

Naturally, the naked actress is in fact from Taiwan or China and spoke Mandarin.

This is because no local actresses willdrop troufor the camera any more.

You may say this is a step forward for women, but I don’t think so.

Frankly, I think it’s prudish and silly.

But what do I know?

To quote a breast cancer awareness bracelet (and my own nephew, who posted it on Facebook only for his mother to publicly rebuke him in the Comments section),I love boobies.

It’s kind of difficult to have a movie about four teenage prostitutes (yes, kiddies, getting paid to have sex is prostitution, not compensated dating) and only one of them will get butt naked.

It’s also difficult to make a movie about a very weighty subject when some of your cast can’t really carry the weight. But if you need young actors, this is a risk you take.

Besides, for most of the film the actors are convincing enough.

Still and all,Girl$/ 囡囡 works for me in other ways.

It was nice to see my former colleague (and still good friend)James Kennyin a small role.

It was also nice to see that he wasn’t from Taiwan or China, if you catch my meaning.

While at times I thinkGirl$/** 囡囡 lays the melodrama on thickly, it occurred to me at one point that, as usual, I am not really the audience for this film.**

***Girl$/* 囡囡 is also, and of course unsurprisingly, a cautionary tale. The film makes this very clear, and what it may lack in subtlety, it makes up for with conviction.**

This is the kind of movie that certain people need to see, specifically the age group occupied by its central characters.

I am not the demographic that needs to hear this message, but it still needs to be heard.

What I took away fromGirl$/ 囡囡

is an appreciation of the director’s take on Hong Kong culture; a materialism bordering on religiosity combined with a permissive (if hypocritical) stance on prostitution.

It can easily give young women the opportunity and environment to engage in behavīors that they may see as innocuous but which may have life-altering or even life-threatening experiences.

Girl$/ 囡囡

may not win any awards for best film, but directorKenneth Biat least deserves a lot of credit for making a movie that has some sort of social relevance and conscience.

It ’ s almost sad how refreshing and rare that is in Hong Kong cinema these days.