The Current Cinema - Barrie Pattison tracks down FIRST NIGHT NERVES (Stanley Kwan, Hong Kong, 2020)

Stanley Kwan was for a while there in the eighties one of the brightest lights of Hong Kong Cinema. He’s spent most of the last decade producing only in an uneasy relationship with the Beijing industry. 

Well here he is back again directing Baat go leuiyan, yat toi hei (literally “Eight Women, One Stage”)/First Night Nerves, a film that clearly shows his interests and style. This one is a great looking movie and proves to be densely plotted and finally likable if you stay with it. If you think you are going to see something comparable to Kwan’s 1986 Love Unto Wastes, 1987 Rouge or even 1991 Center Stage  you’re likely to feel you’ve burned your fourteen bucks but if you’re curious about its maker’s career, this one is fascinating.

Basically it’s about two celebrity actresses who are cast in a theater production in the giant Hong Kong City Hall (for which Kwan joined in protests to keep developers at bay). The women have a history and the anticipated antagonism arrives - Gigi Leung has done a line count and finds Sammi Cheng has more than she does so she hires in a critic, that transgender director Kam Kwok Leung hates, to beef up her part and the director has a heart attack. 

Outside the theater, Cheng’s reduced circumstances make her take a small flat but the play’s enthusiast backer lights a fire under the attorney handling the late husband’s will and activates a trust fund for their child’s education. We lean that the husband died on a flight with another wife with whom he had two more children. Throw in the sixteen year old son Skyping he wants his mum to acknowledge his teenage boy friend.

Late discovery Leung is still agro over the fact that the Beijing producers of her last movie didn’t think her Mandarin was up to standard and had her dubbed. 

After some sword crossing The pair have a long talk out in a cemetery, reconcile and the play opens - apparently to success.

Throw in a meeting with Leung’s old director now philosophically driving taxis, taking for granted the changing fortunes in the Hong Kong film industry.

I found First Night Nerves hard to follow and was continually trying to catch up. A few of the native language speaker critics to whom the performers were more familiar had problems too, so (without one of those nice English language press books of the kind that creates a comfort zone for the regular commentators) I may have got some of this wrong.

The plot rates as dodgy but the film’s imagery is exceptional in the best Jaques Demy tradition. A costume fitting has one of the leads in the gray dress with the red stitched on flowers. The pink light falls on the gauze behind which the musicians play against  the set’s large green neon lettering. Diffusion makes the participants look like they have been dusted with icing sugar. Attention wanders following the narrative but it is constantly snapped back by the visuals.

The piece suggests the influence of the Cassavetes’ Opening Night, as with the characters taking tasty looking meals together back stage. Theatre manager Kiki Sheung rushes in to say there should be no open flames in the building and is comforted to learn that a light bulb is the heat source.

This one turned up as part of one of those one film a month festivals Event runs, in some ways a better model than those engulfing presentations starting back again now. IMDB-proof titles 10 pm. in Thailand, Fukoka  and Fish Park are also scheduled.