Podcasts
Interview: Peter Ho-sun Chan
A Film Whose Spirit is Very Hong Kong: Peter Ho-sun Chan talks on his latest film Perhaps Love.
Interviewed by Saul Symonds
It is impossible to talk about Peter Ho-sun Chan's Perhaps Love without taking note of that fact that it is a Chinese-language musical (in Mandarin) - a rare occurrence indeed, and the first in several decades. But to focus purely on this aspect of the film would be to overlook the personal intensity of its dramatic core, the simple and touching love triangle that keeps the film revolving on its axis. When all is said and done, Chan is a director of love stories, and though Perhaps Love is his most ambitious project to date, it still has all the characteristic elements of the unaffected narratives of love that make up his oeuvre.
Saul Symonds: What inspired you to make a musical in the first place?
Peter Chan: I started to realize, when I was studying the Chinese market, that the mindset of Chinese audiences is completely different from anywhere else in the world. They go to the theatres for big movies. For good movies, they stay at home. The reason is first of all the ticket price, which is way too expensive in China, so they feel that they need to get their money's worth. And their money's worth is not in terms of the quality of the film, but the quantity. For the last 15 years, they have become used to watching good movies at home through one dollar pirated DVDs. And if you watch a love story, why go to the theatres? Watch it at home. What can I add to my love story to attract them to the theatre? So I thought of the musical element. It gave me a bigger canvas behind my smaller more intimate movie.
Symonds: Was the fact that you had a mainland audience in mind a deciding factor in your decision to shoot the film in Mandarin? It's not unusual for films to be set in one country to have the characters speak a different language, such as Herzog's Aguirre which has Spanish conquistadors conversing in German. Did you ever think of putting the film in Cantonese?
Chan: No ...
Symonds: ... but do you think it's important for Hong Kong films to preserve the language of the region?
Chan: No. I've been bombarded with this the past few months. I think it's a very narrow-minded concept to think that a Hong Kong film needs to take place in Hong Kong, and needs to have an all Hong Kong cast and crew, and needs to be in the Cantonese language. I'm actually quite disappointed at people who have been talking like this, especially Hong Kong critics and fellow filmmakers.
I think the spirit of Perhaps Love is completely Hong Kong. It's the kind of story that no mainland director would tell. The story is about memory, it is about forgetting your past, and holding onto your past, which is a fundamental difference between people in the mainland and people in Hong Kong: nostalgia vs. forgetting about the past. People from affluent societies, like Hong Kong, are prone to nostalgia. The story happens in mainland China, to a girl that doesn't want to think about the past. So all this, in spirit, is very Hong Kong.
Symonds: You said that going into this film you were very uncertain about what you were doing ...
Chan: ... the uncertainty came from the musical aspect ...
Symonds: ... were you at all uncertain about how audiences would react?
Chan: Yes ... but I always tell my colleagues at work, all the musical buffs that I surrounded myself with, that "I'm the best gauge, I'm the best metre, because I'm not a big musical fan." I am always my first audience, so if you guys leave me to be the judge of that, I think, at the day's end, we will have a musical that will not intimidate a contemporary audience, and most audiences today are not familiar with musicals, especially Hong Kong audiences, and Chinese are even worse in this respect.
Symonds: At what point did your uncertainty about audience reactions change?
Chan: The Venice premiere. I was totally dazed and confused. I was in a trance. You know, in the Chinese press there were big headlines two days before Venice's closing that we were not going to make it, and people thought it was a publicity stunt. But it was true. We really almost couldn't make it. I edited to the last minute. And there was some screw-up on the colour timing, so I was rushing to Venice after five sleepless nights. And when I saw the audience reaction for the first time it was quite overwhelming because the reaction was very good. But I actually wasn't quite happy with the way some of the scenes were cut, because that was literally the first time I saw the film in a complete form, and I'd been detached from it for a couple of days because my flight so I could see it more objectively, and I actually went back and re-edited after Venice.
Symonds: I read an interview where you compared Perhaps Love to Cabaret. In what ways would you say Fosse is an influence?
Chan: Fosse's a big influence, and not only through Cabaret. I can tell you that the crossroads scene, which is one of my favourite scenes in the film, the prostitute scene, they were references, on the art department side to Hey Big Spender, the Shirley McClaine song in Sweet Charity. From Sweet Charity to Cabaret to Lenny, and more importantly in his autobiographical All That Jazz, Fosse is certainly a ghost looming on the film set. But nobody mentioned him, people just keep mentioning Chicago and Moulin Rouge! And I think it's narrow-mindedness, or convenience, to pick up the most recent two musicals that have been made.
Symonds: The musical is not a traditional Hong Kong/Chinese genre. Where you in any way influenced by the old Shaw or Cathay musicals?
Chan: You know, I never watched those musicals as a kid. But I did watch a lot of them because of this movie. I went back and did a crash course in musicals of every kind. The Shaw musicals were too much about the set, and there's not much substance in the drama. But some of the Cathay musicals, especially one by Wong Jing's father, The Wild Wild Rose, I think that was fantastic. I was so blown away by Grace Chang. I've never watched Grace Chang until recently. She was like Sophia Loren, and it was completely impossible for a Chinese woman in the fifties to be like Sophia Loren, to be not Chinese.
Symonds: You've spoken about Hong Kong films being a little too parochial, and at the moment the HK industry is facing an all-time low. What do you think about the current state of the industry and the films being produced?
Chan: The movies that work in China are only those four or five films a year which break the 100 million mark. Other than that, the remaining movies will not even make 10 million. There's nothing in-between. And just like any society, you need the rock-solid pillar of the middle class. So what happens is all the movie investors in Hong Kong will try to squeeze all their money into being one of the big five, and instead of making 10 movies they'll only make one. And if you make that one movie, would you dare to hire a more daring younger director? No, you won't because the budget's too high. So there'll only be five directors working. And you don't have new blood. But there's a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Most Hong Kong companies know that if they don't squeeze into the big five, all the movies are going to loose money anyway, so they ended up investing in a lot of 3 million dollar movies. Maybe there's room for young talent to actually make smaller movies and maybe they'll take more risks with a 3 million dollar movie. It's a very small budget, but at least you've got a chance. So right now we've got to wait for the younger generation to mature, to come of age, before we can say whether this industry will continue, whether we have a next generation or whether our generation will be that last. It's actually a very crucial time.
The complete interview transcript will be available on http://www.lightsleepercinemag.com in early August.
