| Mr. Cinema | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Samson Chiu |
| Produced by | Henry Fong Ping |
| Starring | Anthony Wong Teresa Mo Ronald Cheng Karen Mok |
| Release date(s) | June 14, 2007 |
| Running time | 110 mins |
| Country | Hong Kong |
| Language | Cantonese |
Mr. Cinema also known as Call Me Left (老港正傳) is a 2007 Hong Kong film starring Anthony Wong, Teresa Mo, Ronald Cheng and Karen Mok.
Contents |
The story is about a pro-communist leftist Zhou Heung-Kong (Anthony Wong) who grew up in the pre-1997 British colony of Hong Kong starting the from 1950s. He lives with his wife Ying (Teresa Mo) who mostly raises the family by herself. Zhou has fantasies of going to Tiananmen Square, but has always been too poor to do so. They eventually find themselves in a HK transferred over to the People's Republic of China. In the end Zhou realised he sacrificed everything for the communist cause, and his family is left with nothing.
The film has been criticised for its "selective history" for covering a long period of HK's history, but does not mention the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests.[1] The Hong Kong 1967 Leftist Riots was only covered briefly, and China's support for its HK-based loyalists is never addressed.[1] The name of Anthony Wong's character Zhou Heung Kong is pronounced similar to "Left(ist) Hong Kong".
The film received mixed reviews. One of them, by Vivienne Chow of Muse magazine, applauded Chiu for 'initiating the idea of telling a Hong Kong story from the perspective of the leftists for the first time,' but deemed the movie 'ultimately overambitious'.[2]