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Why Hong Kong filmmaking couple Alex Law and Mabel Cheung’s nostalgia films are must-sees
Two of the most poignant movies by life partners Law and Cheung explore migration and memory, and star the likes of Sammo Hung and Simon Yam
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The late Hong Kong filmmaker Alex Law Kai-yui is best known abroad for directing Painted Faces (1988), which depicted the early lives of martial arts cinema icons Sammo Hung Kam-bo and Jackie Chan.
But with his life partner Mabel Cheung Yuen-ting, Law also wrote or directed several other classic Hong Kong films, such as The Illegal Immigrant (1985) and The Soong Sisters (1997).
While their wider filmography captured the grand sweep of history, some of the couple’s most poignant collaborations offer a more intimate look at migration and memory. Here are two essential Law-and-Cheung films you should not miss.
Eight Taels of Gold (1989)
The third part of Cheung and Law’s “migration trilogy”, directed by the former and scripted by both, follows a homesick New York taxi driver’s return to his hometown in China after 15 years in Chinatown.
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The film centres on a failed romance between the cabby (played by Hung) and his distant cousin (Sylvia Chang Ai-chia), with observations about China’s modernisation occurring naturally in the background.
“Nostalgia for the land of one’s childhood is a theme which should strike a deep responsive chord among the people of Hong Kong, most of whom are either one or two generations removed from [mainland] China,” South China Morning Post critic Paul Fonoroff wrote in 1989.
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