When the “ten best” lists are compiled for the first year of the new millenium, Durian Durian is sure to be near if not at the top. By far the most substantial Hong Kong movie released in recent months, it is also one of the few to actually have something relevant and meaningful to say about this crazy place in which we live. Director-writer Fruit Chan, in his fourth and best film, takes his “1997 trilogy” (Made in Hong Kong, The Longest Summer, and Little Cheung) one step further, illuminating a pertinent aspect of post-handover Hong Kong and its relationship to the motherland.

More than any other local or Mainland Chinese production, Durian Durian illustrates “one country two systems” in all its unvarnished glory. The film is neatly divided into two parts, with the first half taking place in Hong Kong and the latter half another world away, in Mudanjiang near the North Korean border. The consistent thread is a young Mainland lady, Yan (newcomer Qin Hailu, in the most impressive screen debut of the year). The movie records her stay in Hong Kong where, on a three-month visa, she services as many as three dozen clients a day, and her post-Hong Kong existence back home where she uses her hard-earned cash to become a successful and respected entrepreneuse.

There is a subtle artistry in the director’s seemingly verite approach. There is also an unusual shift in focus, for Yan is not the main character in the film’s Hong Kong section. That belongs to Ah Fun (Mak Wai-fun), a little girl from Guangdong who, along with her mother and brother, lives illegally in Hong Kong. Ah Fun was a supporting character in Little Cheung, thus providing Durian Durian with a forceful yet unforced connection to Fruit Chan’s previous work.

In Durian Durian’s Hong Kong, the SAR is a land of transients who are here to make money, a dirty and emotionally empty place whose gold-paved streets hold the promise of a better life once one takes the gold and moves on. Fruit Chan’s Hong Kong is not unlike the fruit of the title, ugly and smelly (and in one of the movie’s more amusing sequences, potentially fatal), an acquired taste that simultaneously repels and seduces. Fortunately, you don’t have to relish durian to enjoy Durian Durian.

4 Stars

This review is copyright (c) 2000 by Paul Fonoroff. All rights reserved. No part of the review may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.