Snapshots of Hong Kong in Transition

Just in time to record slices of life in Hong Kong as it was shifting from British colony to Chinese “special administrative region,” dynamic filmmaker Fruit Chan began a trilogy of films set in this transitional period. In the process he revitalized Hong Kong’s independent film movement.

Chan, whose real name is Chan Kuo, emerges as a major talent in world cinema. His films breathe with the lives of everyday people, and he has a fluid, spontaneous style in keeping with the naturalness of his actors, who are, remarkably, nonprofessionals Chan encourages to live rather than act their roles. Chan is a master at conveying the experience of real life unfolding.

The UCLA Film and Television Archive is presenting Hong Kong Fruit, composed of two of the films from his trilogy plus his latest work, Saturday and Sunday in Melnitz Hall’s James Bridges Theater. Chan will appear for the West Coast premiere of “Durian Durian,” which screens Saturday at 7:30 p.m. “Little Cheung” (1999) screens Sunday at 7 p.m., followed by “Made in Hong Kong” (1997), the explosive film that put him on the map.

“Durian Durian” takes its title from a Southeast Asian fruit that looks like a pineapple and emerges as a symbol of Hong Kong, spiky and hard-shelled on the outside, sweet on an inside not reached without difficulty. “Durian Durian” shows how “one country, two systems” plays out on its most mercenary level. The Hong Kong of “Durian Durian” is presented from the point of view of those drawn there to make money swiftly and on a scale not possible in the rest of China.

The film’s principal figure is Yan (Qin Hailu), a 21-year-old dancer from the city of Mudanjiang, near the North Korean border. Yet the film’s first half focuses on a beautiful and intelligent 9-year-old girl, Ah Fun (Mak Wai Fan), who lives in cramped quarters with her parents and younger sister in an alley in Hong Kong’s Mong Kok district. Ah Fun’s family is from Guangdong, not far from Hong Kong, which they have entered illegally to save her father, who has lost a leg, from having to travel to Hong Kong every day to find work.

Yan has arrived on a three-month visa, and she is determined to make every second count in amassing as much money as she can. With her head held high and without an ounce of self-pity, Yan resolutely signs up with a call girl service. Yan and Ah Fun strike up an acquaintance as Yan passes back and forth through the alley where Ah Fun lives, between her minuscule apartment and assignations in seedy hotels, accompanied by her sullen young pimp (Yung Wai Yiu), who in a comic moment gets bopped unconscious by a durian. Meanwhile, life is an everyday struggle for Ah Fun’s family, but her parents are warm and loving. When her father brings home a durian to celebrate Ah Fun’s birthday, it ushers in a moment of good-humored domestic bliss.

When Yan’s visa is finally up--with her racking up 38 tricks on her last day, causing her to ponder if she qualifies for the Guinness Book of Records--she takes off, working in one last assignation, on a train bound for home. Swiftly, she’s in another world, a small city with a lot of raw, Communist-style utilitarian buildings but also possessed of a spaciousness enhanced by nearby open countryside. Surprisingly, her parents live in a large, comfortably furnished apartment and are of some means; neither they nor anyone else knows what Yan was up to in Hong Kong.

Yan thus enters a period of reflection and relaxation, catching up with old friends and relatives while weighing her options. As Yan approaches a decision over her future, Mudanjiang grows more inviting, with Hong Kong receding, becoming simply a place where one goes to make good money fast, nothing more.

Even though “Little Cheung” takes us back to Ah Fun’s alley (and around the corner and into a neighborhood coffee shop), this Hong Kong is very different from that of “Durian Durian.” What emerges is a vibrant, friendly working-class community in which everyone seems to know everyone else, especially Little Cheung (Yiu Yuet-Ming), a 9-year-old live wire whose stern father (Gary Lai Chi-Ho) and his mother run the coffee shop. After school Little Cheung works as a delivery boy for his father, who has rejected Ah Fun’s request for the same kind of work. The children strike up a friendship anyway, but one shadowed by the ever-present danger that Ah Fun and her family will be deported.

“Little Cheung” opens in fall 1996 and takes us past the July 1997 changeover, marked by a ceremonial changing of flags at Little Cheung’s school. Of considerable significance is Little Cheung’s name, for it was picked by his doughty grandmother, once an opera singer teamed with the fabled Tang Wing-Cheung, whose mortal illness and eventual death is covered constantly on TV. Tang, who became a movie star as well, becomes emblematic in his passing of the Cantonese culture so soon to fall under the control of the mainland. Intensifying the symbolism of Little Cheung’s name is that when Bruce Lee was 9 he starred in a movie called “Brother Cheung.” However, if “Little Cheung” subtly records the passing of one era and dawning of a new one amid humor and pathos, it imparts a sense that there will always be a Hong Kong.

“Made in Hong Kong” contrasts sharply with the other two films. Bursting with energy and jagged in style, it has a shoot-from-the-hip, shoot-on-the-run freneticism that expresses perfectly the life of Moon (Sam Lee), a scrawny, street-smart punk who senses his life is spiraling downward and lives with his mother in a small flat in a sterile high-rise housing project. Moon hangs out with his ungainly, slow-witted pal (Wenbers Li) nicknamed Sylvester (after Stallone, with cruel irony). Moon is drawn to the free-spirited Ping, with whom he goes on grand outings and indulges in dreamy lounging around.

Deep within Moon there is a decent, yearning streak that is overshadowed by an escalating hopelessness that leads him to move beyond the occasional debt-collection jobs to despairing violence. This is a raw virtuoso work of the utmost impact and awareness, released just as Hong Kong was changing hands. It says a lot for Fruit Chan that he didn’t try to repeat himself but instead moved on, pursuing a constantly evolving style. (310) 206-FILM.

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Sergei Eisenstein’s “Que Viva Mexico!” (1933, reconstructed 1979) screens Friday at 7:30 p.m. at LACMA, launching a weekend series through June 2 of milestone Mexican films, presented in connection with the museum’s “The Road to Aztlan: Art From a Mythic Homeland” exhibition. (323) 857-6010.

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George Sidney’s 1957 film “Pal Joey,” starring Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak and Rita Hayworth, kicks off the 15th annual Last Remaining Seats series Wednesday at 8 p.m. at the Los Angeles Theater, 615 S. Broadway, L.A. (213) 623-3909.