VILLAGE PEOPLE村民心事
KEVIN MA speaks to directors Jenny Suen and Christopher Doyle about The White Girl and Hong Kong’s last fishing village
AFTER COLLABORATING
on Hong Kong Trilogy: Preschooled Preoccupied Preposterous, Jenny Suen and cinematographer Christopher Doyle have teamed up as co-directors on The White Girl. Set in a fictional place dubbed ‘the last fishing village of Hong Kong’, the film is a whimsical love story between a young woman who is allergic to sunlight (Angela Yuen) and a mysterious visitor from Japan (Joe Odagiri). Meanwhile, a young boy suspects that there’s a conspiracy involving the village chief and some shady visitors.
Doyle tells Discovery that the film offers a fresh view of Hong Kong. ‘It’s a beautiful love story that celebrates this place in a way that you haven’t seen before,’ he says. That love is clear in the way they capture fishing village Tai O (in the western corner of Lantau Island), which has been around for at least three centuries. ‘I think [ Tai O] is the first symbol of Hong Kong people’s tenacity,’ says Doyle. It was the place many immigrants crossed over to from southern China, settling down in stilt homes clustered over the Tai O creek.
To the directors, Tai O is special because it’s still thriving while other fishing villages have died out. ‘ There’s still a vibrant community there,’ says Suen. ‘ There are four schools and two different churches. It’s still a living place. It wasn’t something that’s been emptied out. A lot of fishing villages near where I live are shells of what they once were.’
More accessible than Doyle’s previous directorial efforts,
The White Girl is an offbeat and allegorical film, in which mood and metaphor matter more than narrative. Even though the directors call the film a love story, it also references serious social and political issues in Hong Kong today. But The White Girl also features unexpected bits of quirky humour and optimism, offering a counterbalance to its sober messages about the future of the city that Doyle and Suen love so much.
導演白海和著名電影攝影師杜可風繼《香港三部曲：開門見山、愚公移山、後悔莫及》後再次合作，聯合執導《白色女孩》。電影以一個名為「香港最後一條漁村」的虛構地點為背景，描寫對陽光過敏的少女（袁澧林飾） 和來自日本的神秘旅人（小田切讓飾）兩人撲朔迷離的愛情故事；同時，一個男孩懷疑村長和一些形跡可疑的遊客之間有不可告人的陰謀。
杜可風向《Discovery》表示，本片讓觀眾以另一種角度來看香港：「這是一個美麗的愛情故事，用一個你前所未見的方式來歌頌這個地方。」影片透過鏡頭捕捉屹立大嶼山西岸逾三個世紀的大澳漁村的面貌，不難看出他們對這個地方的愛有多深。杜可風說：「我覺得大澳象徵著香港人不屈不撓的精神。」那裡的居民很多都從中國南方前來，在大澳這個小海灣搭建棚屋定居。
兩位導演認為大澳如此獨特，是因為香港的漁村大部分已消失殆盡，只餘下碩果僅存的大澳，白海說：「那裡仍是一個充滿活力的社區，有四間學校和兩間教堂，仍然是人們生活的地方，而非人去樓空。很多我家附近的漁村，都只剩下空殼。」
跟杜可風之前執導的作品相比，《白色女孩》較平易近人，是一部不落俗套、寓意深遠的電影，著重氣氛和隱喻多於傳統的敘事結構。雖然兩位導演都說這是個愛情故事，但在電影中可看到香港今時今日一些重大的社會和政治問題。不過《白色女孩》也有一些令人意想不到的獨特幽默感與樂觀思維，平衡了兩位導演對他們熱愛的城市的將來所寄語的嚴肅信息。