The Longest Summer is the second film to come from Fruit
Chan, director and screenwriter of Made in Hong
Kong (one of my favorite films). So the obvious question to ask would
be "is it as good?" No, but it's still an excellent film.
The Longest Summer is set in the summer of 1997, during the
months leading up to and following the handover of Hong Kong to China. At
the beginning of the film, several of the main characters are being
dismissed following the dissolution of the Hong Kong division of the
British Army. The movie follows one of these men, Ga Yin, in his efforts
to find a place for himself in a new Hong Kong.
Ga Yin is recruited into a triad by his brother, Ga Suen,
himself a low-level triad member. Ga Yin tries to insist that he is just
doing a job like any other, though he knows better. Meanwhile, he and his
unemployed friends begin discussing a bank robbery as a way to make money.
There is also a subplot revolving around Jane, a woman with whom Ga Yin
and Ga Suen have a chance encounter near the beginning of the film. This
is pretty much the entire plot. The script is more about the characters
than about developing the story.
Part of the genius of The Longest Summer is its avoidance of
almost all the obvious paths it could have taken. While this could have
been a simple movie about people's lives taking a turn for the worse, this
film manages to constantly find a less obvious way to make its point. For
example, in a typical tale such as this, the bank robbery would go wrong,
resulting in the bloody deaths of many of its main characters. This film,
however, manages to find something besides success or failure to make its
point.
The strongest theme in The Longest Summer seems to be the
unpredictability of life. It illustrates this theme without seeming as if
the screenwriter had simply tried to think of the strangest occurrences
possible to throw at the characters. Being a film about the handover to
Hong Kong made in 1998, when there were still many questions about Hong
Kong's future, this film is a perfect echo of what many people had to be
feeling at the time (and are probably still feeling).
Compared to Made in Hong
Kong, this film is fairly tame in terms of editing and visual style.
Frankly, I missed the more experimental style of Fruit Chan's previous
film. The moments where he does use something out of the ordinary are very
effective but they are few and far between. The quality of the film would
not have been hurt by more visual experimentation. In addition, The
Longest Summer doesn't have the perfect union of musical visual elements
found in Made in Hong
Kong. There is nothing wrong with the music, but it doesn't lift the
film to another level either.
Overall, Fruit Chan's sophomore film is excellent, though
less stunning than his first. I will be very much looking forward to
anything he does in the future, and I hope he can recapture the utter
magic of Made in Hong
Kong.
From www.urth.org/reviewss
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