CHINESE BOX (1997)
Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 4.0) ******************************** Key to rating system: 2.0 stars - Debatable 2.5 stars - Some people may like it 3.0 stars - I liked it 3.5 stars - I am biased in favor of the movie 4.0 stars - I felt the movie's impact personally or it stood out *********************************
Directed by: Wayne Wang
Written by: Jean-Claude Carriere and Larry Gross.
Starring: Jeremy Irons, Gong Li, Maggie Cheung, Ruben Blades
Ingredients: Dying photojournalist, 1997 Hong Kong hand over, street waif, friend, lover
Synopsis: John, a British author who has adopted Hong Kong as his home, suddenly finds out he is dying of leukemia six months before the hand over of Hong Kong to China. He quits his job and tries to explore the meaning of Hong Kong by wandering the streets with a video camera. Since John is a character of internal feelings and few words, John's roommate Jim (Ruben Blades) occasionally acts as the movie's mouthpiece.
What is Hong Kong before the hand over? Is Hong Kong like John's lover Vivian (Gong Li), a Chinese woman who hangs on to him knowing he will die? Is Hong Kong like the scrappy street waif Jean (Maggie Cheung), cast off by a former boyfriend, who hustles to survive? Is it like a business, merely getting a change of management? Or like a defiant animal in the marketplace? A woman in blue jeans vowing to start life anew?
CHINESE BOX explores these metaphorical images and more, and leaves the answer unresolved, letting us come to our own conclusions. The only thing we know for sure is that a tumultuous change is occurring before our eyes, accompanied by an intensity of feeling similar to time spent with a dying lover.
Opinion: When Vivian compares herself to Hong Kong and the dying John (Jeremy Irons) wonders to himself, "I wonder if I can last as long as the British" six months before the 1997 hand over, you can bet this film is not about leukemia, but a metaphor trying to establish the meaning of Hong Kong.
One of the weaknesses of the story is that it has very little story. After quitting his job a dying John basically wanders around the city with his video camera capturing images and occasionally falling into weakness or frustration. His thoughts remain confused until the end of the movie. This is likely to disappoint fans of strong storylines.
On the other hand, CHINESE BOX is powerful from the artistic point of view. In one scene, John's friend Jim takes a projector, and projects the videotaped face of the talking street waif onto John's face, creating an interesting effect. From images of jade and bloody hands to a man beheading a chicken, to a scene where the street waif confronts a British childhood boyfriend who abandoned her, CHINESE BOX offers us an unending stream of metaphors for the complicated feelings that abound in real life Hong Kong. Perhaps the strongest image (shown twice) is the close up of the still-beating heart on a faceless chopped fish in the marketplace. CHINESE BOX is also one of the few films in which the soundtrack completely and perfectly matches the imagery, whether it's the sound of traffic or the sound of silence.
Gong Li doesn't get many lines, (mostly gets to show emotions) but she does a fabulous job within that limitation. Ruben Blades and Maggie Cheung are outstanding, and Jeremy Irons puts in a solid characterization of a man trying to come to grips with complicated feelings.
Reviewed May 31, 1998
Copyright © 1998 by David Sunga This review and others like it can be found at THE CRITIC ZOO: http://www.criticzoo.com email: zookeeper@criticzoo.com
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