Durian Durian

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
2000

Durian Durian
Fruit Chan
Hong Kong, China, 2000
117 minutes Colour/35mm
Production Company: Nicetop Independent Ltd.
Executive Producer: Vincent Maraval, Alain de la Mata, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, Carrie Wong
Producer: Doris Yang
Screenplay: Fruit Chan
Cinematographer: Lam Wah Chuen
Editor: Tin Sam Fat
Sound: Nip Kei Wing, Phyllis Cheng, Jiang Peng, Chan Wai Keung
Music: Lam Wah Chuen, Chu Hing Cheung
Principal Cast: Hailu Qin, Wai Fan Mak, Suet Man Mak, Xiao Ming Bai
Production: Nicetop Independent Ltd.

“The durian is a very strange tropical fruit. People either love it or hate it. Just as people are entranced or repulsed by Portland Street and its inhabitants.”—Fruit Chan

If the young boy in Little Cheung represents the fear and paranoia Hong Kong feels toward China, Durian Durian’s female protagonists could well embody the Mainland’s wary, unsure reply.

Fan ekes out her existence scrubbing dishes in a Hong Kong back alley. Her visa has expired but she has remained, a vital source of income for her family along with her one-legged father, a smuggler.

Yan was born in Northern China and has come to Hong Kong for the same reason as Fan—to make money. She becomes the hardest working prostitute in town, turning as many tricks as her three-month visa allows. She trudges many times a day through the alley where Fan works, moving from one cheap hotel to another. One day the pimp accompanying her—a dumb teenage gangster—gets his head smashed from behind in a random act of violence. The weapon is a strange, spiky fruit known as the “durian.” Soon after, Fan’s father brings home a durian as a special birthday treat. The terrible smell of the thing is not made better by its sweet taste.

Once her three months are up, Yan returns to Northern China, having befriended the little girl Fan. She is now estranged from her fiancé and her past, unhappy with the cold and constrained lifestyle awaiting her. She is imprisoned by the radical choices she has made, which divorce her from her comfortably middle-class destiny.

A much more deliberate and brooding film than Little Cheung, Durian Durian masterfully shifts mood from the frenetic Hong Kong of the first half to the uncomfortable, stolid realities of Mainland China in the second. Much connects Chan’s two films and much is left open for debate.
—Noah Cowan