ABSTRACT

Contemporary Hong Kong (HK) films are often identified by their use of aesthetically determined urban landscapes based around an excess of neon lights and shop fronts adorned with traditional Chinese script. However, the idea that HK cinema is uniquely representative of local (Chinese-based) cultures suggests a naive view of the crossover nature of HK cinema that draws from extended, generational interaction with Japanese, European, and Hollywood cinematic styles. This chapter explores how HK cinema has emerged in line with Kavoori’s (2009) definition of crossover cinema as a site that draws on the specifics of one locale to address more universalistic themes, and “where the specifics of ethnicity are recast within wider narrative concerns of a global kind” (260). While Chinese ethnicity and the diasporic cultures of China remain a vital element in HK cinema, the pressures associated with ensuring box-office returns for foreign investors and an emergent base of a cinema-savvy global audience means that HK films are no longer exclusively marked by their “Chineseness.” The nexus of the HK cinema industry with regional and global production/distribution networks has nurtured an art-cinema aesthetic (and narrative style) employed by directors such as Wong Kar Wai and Fruit Chan and a corresponding genre aesthetic in popular mainstream crime dramas from Alan Mak or the comedies from Stephen Chow. The long-standing imprint of Japanese Yakuza and martial arts action films, for instance, clearly underpin the HK aesthetics found in the Infernal Affairs (Wujian dao) (Lau and Mak 2002) trilogy and replicated in recent films including Accident (Yi ngoi) (Cheang 2009), Confession of Pain (Seung sing or Shang cheng) (Lau and Mak 2006), and Overheard (Sit yan fungwan) (Mak and Chong 2009).