Hong Kong Film Gala Presentation
Since 2021, the programme has showcased the work of Hong Kong film-makers. In in 2023, seven movies in their original Cantonese dialogue, subtitled in Chinese and English, will make their Singapore premiere.
Among them is the comedy Over My Dead Body (NC16, 119 minutes, screens on Oct 1 at 11am), which stars Teresa Mo and Ronald Cheng in a send-up of the lengths to which property owners will go to protect their investment.
An average family discovers a corpse on the doorstep. Aware of how the label of “murder flat” could hurt the home’s resale value, the family hatches a plan to make the problem go away.
Over My Dead Body’s director Ho Cheuk Tin also helmed crime drama The Sparring Partner (2022), for which he earned the Best New Director prize at the Hong Kong Film Awards.
The Sparring Partner (R21, 138 minutes, screens on Sept 30 at 2pm) follows two men standing trial for a gruesome murder. Inspired by a 2013 homicide that grabbed headlines, the story describes the twisty paths the accused, the lawyers and nine jurors follow in the search for truth.
Ho, as well as producer-scriptwriter Amy Chin, will attend the public screening of Over My Dead Body and participate in a question-and-answer session.
The programme is presented by the non-profit Asian Film Awards Academy in collaboration with Singapore Film Society (SFS), and supported by the government-linked organisations Create Hong Kong, Hong Kong Film Development Fund and the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, Singapore.
Where: Shaw Theatres Paya Lebar Quarter, 05-02 PLQ Mall, 10 Paya Lebar Road
MRT: Paya Lebar
When: Sept 30 and Oct 1, various times
Admission: $15.50 for SFS members, $17.50 for non-members
Info: www.singaporefilmsociety.com/hkfgp2023
El Conde (R21)
110 minutes, Netflix, 3 stars
El Conde is on Netflix at an opportune moment, immediately after its Venice Film Festival best screenplay triumph and on the 50th anniversary of the coup d’etat, which ushered in autocrat Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year reign of terror.
Some 40,000 disappeared, and were tortured and executed under his regime.
Chilean auteur Pablo Larrain gained recent Academy Awards attention for his Hollywood biopics Spencer (2021), on Britain’s Princess Diana; and Jackie (2016), about the United States’ former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.
The writer-director is back home, and he has reimagined his country’s reviled dictator as a literal monster in his continuing studies of 20th-century historical figures.
In an alternate history, Chile’s General Pinochet (Jaime Vadell) faked his death in 2006 and is a 250-year-old vampire hiding in a crumbling mansion at the southern tip of the South American continent.
With his flapping military cape for wings, Pinochet takes flight over the city of Santiago on a hunt for fresh human blood. He is decrepit but still depraved, still sucking his populace dry.
This darkly comic art-house horror shot in crepuscular black and white is a metaphor in search of a story, strangely muted even during scenes of frozen hearts being greedily consumed.
The third act is nevertheless a mordant masterstroke. It introduces a certain British premier, and sets about exposing the Western autocrats for spawning Pinochet.
Sleep (NC16)
95 minutes, 4 stars
South Korean writer-director Jason Yu’s excellent debut feature rests the horror atop a solid emotional base formed by the bond between husband and wife.
They show their care through practical action. She bolsters his ego as an actor. In return, he pays attention to her worries. It starts cute – and this is where the story’s humour enters – but love, as Yu shows, has a way of creating unintended consequences.
Newly-weds Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun) and Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) have it all: a loving relationship, a small but cosy apartment and, soon, a baby. With Soo-jin’s encouragement, Hyun-su’s career as an actor is gaining traction.
One morning, she wakes to find household items not in their usual places. Over the following days, the small messes become larger and more sinister in their implications. Soo-jin is determined to find the cause, as she has a baby to protect.
Her character starts as a victim, then becomes a sleuth, putting together the puzzle pieces and taking the story to a conclusion miles away from where it first began.
Within its compact 95 minutes, and without relying on jump scares or crazy computer graphics, this story of an average couple dealing with mysterious nightly terrors packs in more scares than films twice as long.
