Dap huet cam mui (2015)

Dap huet cam mui: Directed by Philip Yung. With Aaron Kwok, Jessie Li, Michael Ning, Elaine Jin. Human nature begins where truth ends Welcome to the murder without a body

“u0026#39;Port of Callu0026#39; belongs to that rare breed of Hong Kong film that strives to be social commentary. Indeed, that shouldnu0026#39;t come as something surprising for those who have seen writer/ director Philip Yungu0026#39;s previous two works, u0026#39;Glamourous Youthu0026#39; and u0026#39;May We Chatu0026#39;. Here, Yung dramatically raises the stakes by basing his story on a gruesome, real-life murder case which shocked the nation back in 2008, so like its real-life inspiration, u0026#39;Portu0026#39; revolves around the murder of a young girl that draws three distinct individuals together.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOn the first hand is 16-year-old Wang Jiamei (Jessie Li), who moves to Hong Kong in 2009 to live with her mother, stepfather and older biological sister. Over the course of a fractured narrative divided into three chapters, we will come to learn of Jiameiu0026#39;s ambitions to be a model that led to her auditioning for a dodgy talent company which uses her not as a photo-model but as talent scout, and how that eventually leads her to become a u0026#39;paid escortu0026#39; so she doesnu0026#39;t have to ask her mother for money for material stuff she wants to buy. In particular, her life of prostitution leads her to fall in love with a bookish but nonetheless handsome-looking twenty- something who promptly throws her under the bus when he is confronted by his girlfriend, leaving her emotionally devastated and emptier than ever before.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe next character we are asked to pay attention to is Ting Tsz- chung (stage actor Michael Ning in his bigscreen debut), a stocky short- fused meat deliveryman who also happens to be a triad member. Very early on, the tenement house where Ting lives is the site of a grisly murder where the victim was dismembered and subsequently disposed of in various locations all over town, and Ting turns himself in shortly after to confess his role in killing Jiamei after a drug-addled night of paid sex where Jiamei asks Ting to murder her. The whodunit isnu0026#39;t what Yung is after here; rather, the second chapter entitled u0026#39;A Lonely Personu0026#39; in particular tells of how Ting was unceremoniously dumped not long before he meets Jiamei by a girl whom he had a sweet and soft spot for.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eFinally, there is Chong-sir (Aaron Kwok), a Regional Crimes Bureau detective assigned to Jiameiu0026#39;s case with his partner Smoky (Patrick Tam). Like Kwoku0026#39;s recent u0026#39;detectiveu0026#39; roles, this one comes with its own quirks – not only is his physical appearance, complete with an unflattering crop of graying hair, rumpled clothes and ill-fitting glasses, slightly disorientating to say the least, Chong-sir loves to take his own picture using a Polaroid camera at murder scenes and the homes of other people he interviews as part of the investigation. As much as Jiameiu0026#39;s is an open-and-shut case, Chong- sir is intrigued by just how a young girl like Jiamei would end up in such a predicament, that curiosity driven in part by his own role as a father.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eLike we said earlier, Yung chooses to tell his tale by moving back and forth in time, and that choice of narrative structure does take some time to get used to, to say the very least. As its title suggests, the first chapter u0026#39;Seeking Meiu0026#39; is probably the most disjointed, comprised of scenes that do not intuitively gel with each other; the middle chapter gets slightly more coherent, in part because it is also where the past and present timelines meet and things happen in a more linear fashion. But altogether, the film demands a fair bit of patience and focus on the part of its viewer to keep seemingly disparate events in mind with the promise that it will all start to make sense towards the end.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAmidst the somewhat uneven and inconsistent pacing however is an absolutely consistent sense of ennui, sadness and even anguish. Jiamei, Ting and Chong-sir are all lonely individuals in their own way – one who finds her hopes of companionship dashed by a u0026#39;bastardu0026#39;, one who finds his feelings unreciprocated, and one who has become estranged from his wife (now ex-wife) and daughter over the years because of his work. The world they inhabit is similarly bleak, captured by cinematographer Christopher Doyle in all its harsh beauty whether the gritty alleys or cramped working-class apartments where isolated souls are faced with their own misery.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eEspecially defined with acute poignancy is Jiameiu0026#39;s growing disillusion with life, meant undoubtedly as a symbol of a whole segment of youth who are searching for purpose and fulfilment in their lives but who come out empty. That we feel so deeply for Jiamei is also credit to newcomer Jessie Liu0026#39;s heartfelt performance, conveying her characteru0026#39;s fragility, melancholy, desolation and eventual despair as a result of her displaced upbringing as well as her displacement from society. Li is matched by an equally gripping performance by Ning, who brings pathos to his loner character so that we feel for Ting than regard him as a psychopath.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThatu0026#39;s not to say that the film is perfect; that it most certainly isnu0026#39;t, and for one, it isnu0026#39;t hard to imagine a much more powerful film if the storytelling were more focused and the characters more well-defined. Yet there is something hypnotic and mesmerising about it, about the way it portrays the state of disfranchised youth in society, about how it gives voice to their frustrations, anxieties and hopelessness, and most of all about how relevant it is. It is for these reasons that u0026#39;Port of Callu0026#39; stays with you long after the credits are over, provoking you to think about the Jiameis and Tings in our midst and what we can do to avoid the tragedy that brought this film to being in the first place. It may not be the best Hong Kong film youu0026#39;ll see this year (notwithstanding its official submission by the territory to the Oscars), but it is probably one of the most significant.”