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production
notes
Dir Yim Ho
HK 1997
124 min
Feature 35 mm
Chinese with English subtitles
Yim
Ho directed award-winning films like Red Dust (1990), The Day the
Sun Turned Cold (1994) and The Sun has Ears (1996).
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Programme:
Asian Expressions: Gender Bending in de Hong Kong Cinema
Aggie,
a young woman who has just lost her last relative, couldn't overcome
the grief until she serendipitously finds a new "family"
in the strange Louie and his mother Emma, who used to be his father.
The story focuses on Aggie's growing sense of safety and attachment
to this unusual family. At first, cooking was Aggie's sole tool of
communication, but her relationship with the transsexual mother helps
her come to terms with her history.
Actor
Law Kar-Ying, who plays the role of the mother Emma, has been playing
female impersonators in the Chinese Opera in Hong Kong for decades.
Despite the long tradition of cross-dressing in Hong Kong cinema,
the role of Emma was actually this cinema's first serious representation
of a transgender woman. Law Kar-Ying's role was subtly performed.
The
story is based on Banana Yoshimoto's highly acclaimed bestseller
Kitchen that took the world by storm in the 80's. Yoshimoto just
turned 23 when the book was published for the first time in Japan.
Her work captures her generation's spirit of loss.
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