The first independent film released in post-Handover Hong Kong, director Fruit Chan’s atmospheric shoestring-budget character study is a rough-and-ready piece of work shot on grainy leftover 35mm short ends in the city’s overcrowded subsidized housing projects. The result is a tough, pessimistic film, a portrait of a city on the brink that follows the drifting of high school dropout and wannabe Triad tough Autumn Moon (Sam Lee, in a star-making role, opposite a largely nonprofessional cast), who sees little hope for his future or that of his home as a newly created Special Administrative Region within China. A raw, groundbreaking drama and portrait of nihilistic youth in the same vein as Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955), My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991), and The Doom Generation (Gregg Araki, 1995), the film poses questions that remain burningly relevant as tumult engulfs Hong Kong.
4K restoration was carried out in the Hong Kong and Bologna headquarters of L’Immagine Ritrovata, made from the original camera negative with the supervision of director Fruit Chan and cinematographer O Sing-Pui.
A Metrograph Pictures release.
