A Hong Kong Movie With China Appeal

When Hong Kong’s film festival opened Wednesday, it was with a rom-com that tests the fidelity of mismatched lovers in much the same way that Hong Kong questions the motives of a dissimilar mainland China.

“Love in the Buff” reunites Miriam Yeung and Shawn Yue as Cherie and Jimmy, the chain-smoking couple in 2010′s “Love in a Puff” who found romance while flicking ashes into Hong Kong’s outdoor trash cans.



 

“Buff” picks up several months later, when their relationship has ended. Jimmy takes a job in Beijing, finds a new girlfriend, and that seems to end any chance of reconciliation. But fate pushes them together for another attempt at love after cosmetics-store manager Cherie is transferred to Beijing.

For nearly a decade, Hong Kong-China co-productions have become the new standard for Hong Kong’s filmmakers. But local audiences often complain that the movie industry has ignored hometown tastes in favor of the much larger market in mainland China.

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Hong Kongers, who speak the Cantonese dialect, are fiercely protective of their local culture.

“I think it’s quite remarkable to have a Hong Kong film made in Beijing and still retain its Hong Kong flavor,” said Li Cheuk-to, the Hong Kong International Film Festival’s artistic director.

“Buff’s” Hong Kong-born director, Pang Ho-cheung, and his producer-wife Subi Liang, themselves packed up and relocated to Beijing nearly two years ago for the promise of the Chinese market. “That’s where the money is,” Mr. Pang told the Journal at the time.

“Like the city itself, films made in Hong Kong must inevitably blend in with the China market,” Mr. Pang said in a recent statement. “While I’m bent on keeping the core values, I must regularly adjust my positioning and thinking. To me, Jimmy Cheung and Cherie Yu are no longer characters in a film, but a record of the change of times.”

Whether those times have come of age will be decided by audiences on both side of the border when “Buff” opens March 29 in Hong Kong and a day later in mainland China.