Tau ban no hoi (1982)

Director:

Ann Hui

Writer:

Tai An-Ping Chiu (writer)

Release Date:

13 October 1982 (Hong Kong)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A Japanese photojournalist revisits Vietnam after the Liberation and learns harsh truths about its regime and its "New Economic Zones".

Plot Keywords:

Vietnam

Awards:

5 wins & 7 nominations

Cast

Meiying Jia
George Lam	...	Shiomi Akutagawa
Andy Lau	...	To Minh
Season Ma	...	Cam Nuong
Cora Miao	...	Nguyen's Mistress

Also Known As:

Boat People (Hong Kong: English title)
Tou ben nu hai (Hong Kong: Mandarin title)

Runtime:

109 min

Country:

Hong Kong

Language:

Cantonese | Japanese | Vietnamese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:R

Filming Locations:

Hainan, China

Company:

Bluebird Movie Enterprises Ltd.

Trivia:

When Yun-Fat Chow turned down the role of To Minh, he recommended to producer Meng Xia a young actor, who had just worked with him on a TV series. Chow didn't know the actor by name. Leading man George Lam spoke of a young actor who played a small role in a movie starring Lam. The young actor made quite an impression and Lam thought the young man would fit in the role of To Minh. But he didn't know the actor by name. As the shooting began in Hainan Island and the role of To Minh was still undecided, the whole crew became anxious. Cinematographer David Chung suggested another young actor and Meng Xia went to meet with him. Xia finally cast the young actor as To Minh. The actor was Andy Lau, who happened to be the same unknown actor who Yun-Fat Chow and George Lam referred to.

Still Ann Hui's most important and powerful film

This film, which was released in 1982 in Hong Kong to rave reviews and packed theaters, was one of the very few "politicized" films made in Hong Kong. Since then Ann Hui has continued to engage such subjects, but out of the contemporary HK filmmakers, only Fruit Chan could be said to be a match for Ann Hui in these politicized subject matters.

"Boat People" is essentially a dramatization of the political realities facing common Vietnamese people after the Communist Liberation of 1976. Hui has very shrewdly utilized a dramatic structure (rather than a documentary) to show us the truth behind the Vietnamese Communist regime, which forces so many commoners to leave as refugees by boat to elsewhere in Asia. Hui never overplays the emotions or the drama, instead choosing to tell the story straight. The deaths, the harsh facts, all come across very strongly, but like what one IMDb reviewer has said, there is no preaching, nor are there any strenuous effort to make a statement as in American Vietnam movies. Ann Hui herself stated that she made many interviews of Vietnamese refugees before she decided to dedicate herself into making this movie.

The whole film is shot in China, Hainan Island, with the support of the Chinese Communist Party. Some critics read the movie as a reflection of anxiety on the coming Communist takeover of Hong Kong in 1997, but Ann Hui herself appears never to have indicated this was her intent. The movie has dialogue almost entirely in Cantonese (the language of Hong Kong, the place of production); Vietnamese is used sparingly, as in the songs, but most Westerners may not be able to tell the difference. The cast is almost entirely Chinese, but Ann Hui probably selected most of them because of their facial resemblance with the Vietnamese. It is impossible to tell that the female lead, Season Ma, is not Vietnamese (she is Chinese).

Three decades later, this film still remained Ann Hui most considerable achievement. It was voted in 2002 as #8 of the best Chinese films of all times by the Hong Kong Film Academy. The film's impact is such that it made many of Ann Hui's later political films such as "Ordinary Heroes" seemed quite tame in comparison. But it's such a pity so few people in the IMDb has seen this movie - as of 2009, only slightly more than a hundred people has voted in the the IMDb. This is an arresting film on such an important subject that it is literally begging to be seen by more viewers - even though the political situation of Vietnam has moved on a lot since the late 1970s.