San Francisco International Film Festival 2018

[Chris Knipp]

JENNY SUEN, CHRISTOPHER DOYLE: THE WHITE GIRL (2017)


ANNGELA YUEN IN THE WHITE GIRL

Al allergy to vigorous filmmaking?

A girl who has always been told she is allergic to the rays of the sun.

"White Girl is a more focused and conventional film than Doyle’s Hong Kong Trilogy, which Suen produced, but it is still much more concerned with mood and vibe than crass plot points. Without doubt, we can see its aesthetic kinship with some of the classic Wong Kar-wai films he shot. It is a quiet, lulling film. . ." -J.B. Spins (Joe Bendel).

Lulling is right, as in putting to sleep. This is a misfire attempting to bring together misfits and present somewhat obvious allegories about Hong Kong, once a crowd of fishing villages, with its focus on a fishing village and a young woman who lonogs for her mother (the old UK connection, get it?). A young woman whose supposed sensitivity to sunlight keeps her sheltered except at night. One night she goes out and encounters a young Japanese man, Sakamoto (pop star Joe Odagiri) who is living in an abandoned historic tower "which houses a camera obscura that captures village life and projects it onto a decaying wall" (Screen Daily).

Also wandering round is a street kid called Ho Zai (Jeff Yiu) who sells mosquito coils with a singsong chant. He lives with a mute Buddhist monk with the hobby of fashioning Rube Goldberg devices. It is all shot in pale foggy blue. Those who think the visuals at times evoke Doye's cinematography for Wong Kar-wai in the great days of their Nineties collaborations are imagining things, though of course, Doyle is incapable of making uninteresting images. It's just the nonexistent, meandering story and terminally low-keyed quirkiness that are a bore. It is strange that Suen and Doyle returned to Hong Kong after both being long away only to produce such an anemic effort

Conversation with Jenny and Chris: click.

SFIFF SHOWTIMES:
Thursday, April 12, 2018 at 9:00 p.m. at Creativity Theater
Monday, April 16, 2018 at 6:15 p.m. at Victoria Theatre




JENNY SUEN AND CHRISTOPHER DOYLE