Little Cheung

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
2000

Little Cheung
Fruit Chan
Hong Kong, China, 1999
107 minutes Colour/35mm
Production Company: Nicetop Independent Ltd.
Executive Producer: Carrie Wong
Producer: Doris Yang, Makoto Ueda
Screenplay: Fruit Chan
Cinematographer: Lam Wah Chuen
Editor: Tin Sam Fat
Production Designer: Chris Wong
Sound: Ng Kwong Wah
Music: Lam Wah Chuen, Chu Hing Cheung
Principal Cast: Yiu Yuet Ming, Mak Wai Fan, Mak Suet Man, Chu Sun Ya, Gary Lai
Production: Nicetop Independent Ltd.

Hong Kong is a crazy and complex miracle. Its peculiar attractions have made it a central character for all sorts of filmmakers. No one, however, has gone deeper into the city’s soul than Fruit Chan. Two of his earlier films, Made in Hong Kong and The Longest Summer, feel like fact-finding missions, exploring specific Hong Kong characters in a documentary-like format. Little Cheung is something totally different. It uses an elliptical, cross-hatched narrative to convey the daily struggle to remain a winner in this city of so many losers, while at the same time asking what place Hong Kong now occupies in the world—particularly in terms of its patron, phantom and uneasy friend, Mainland China.

The film is told from the perspective of nine-year-old Little Cheung, a rambunctious, charming little fellow who, when not attending school, delivers take-out orders for his father’s restaurant. From brothels to barber shops, Little Cheung comes to know all of his wild Hong Kong neighbourhood and earns big tips at the same time. His disciplinarian father, practical mother and sad, loving grandmother form his home environment. Conflict, however, comes in the form of his brother, a gang member, who is banned from the house. One day, Little Cheung befriends Fan, a mainland girl illegally living in the city. They have great fun together, peeing in obnoxious customers’ teas and other pranks, until they fall into the midst of a gangland fight. Miraculously saved by a stranger, Cheung returns home only to be brutally punished by his father for getting involved. He runs away from home on the day of his grandma’s birthday, just when Fan is about to be deported.

The most amazing feat of Chan’s direction is his ability to convey the easily distracted, hyperactive world of a little boy, with big events heightened beyond belief and restless insecurities underlying all his activities. Chan is also a master at detail, bringing such an earthy life to this megalopolis we can practically smell and taste its every corner.
—Noah Cowan