6 significant Hong Kong New Wave films

Director Ann Hui is one of the most well-known and celebrated faces of Hong Kong’s first new wave, but Song of the Exile is often glossed over in favour of her other films like 1982’s Boat People. Song of the Exile touches on a whole host of social issues that continue to be relevant today. Revolving around the strained relationship between Hueyin (Maggie Cheung), an overseas university graduate returning to Hong Kong from London, and Aiko (Lu Hsiao-fen), her Japanese immigrant mother, Song of the Exile is a compelling inquiry into diasporic subjectivities, migration, belonging, and familial silence.

Anita Mui plays Fleur, an old-world ghost from the 30s returning to the real world 50 years later in search of her long lost lover (Leslie Cheung), who she failed to locate in the afterlife after their suicide pact. She eventually forges a – at times, uneasy – friendship with local newspaper writer Yuen (Alex Man) and his girlfriend Chor (Emily Chu), who promise to help her. Mui’s elegant and otherworldly performance here is one for the ages – to put it bluntly, she’s absolutely ghostly. It’s hard to imagine anybody else managing to convey the ethereally melancholic loneliness that Fleur feels. After all, who could ever possibly understand her tragedy and how she feels? She quite literally hails from a different era.

Director Stanley Kwan was one of the most prominent figures to emerge from the second wave, and thanks to gorgeous films such as Rouge, it’s not hard to see why. Rouge rightfully has a place as not only one of the best films amongst the new wave, but also one of the greatest Hong Kong films of all time.

A Better Tomorrow is not exceedingly deep, romantic, or cerebral – it’s ultimately just about a guy trying his best to do some good in his life – but that relative simplicity and the focus on its characters’ emotions are what makes us sympathetic to them. Over-the-top action scenes – think seemingly invincible combatants and gunmen dual-wielding pistols – are just the cherry on top. As such, A Better Tomorrow single-handedly set the stage for the ‘heroic bloodshed’ genre that has since become the global standard for action movies.

It might be easy to write Nomad off as nothing more than a stylish and moody coming of age film – despite the fact that its characters are all young adults – but the film is more than that. Nomad is a reflection of the wistful ennui of youth, of how the existential dread of youngsters is often concealed by indulgence and acts of reckless abandon (sex on an actual moving tram, for example!) The film comes to a rather confusing and abrupt end – we won’t say too much, but it involves Japanese assassins – making it all the more unsettling.