Gam chi yuk sip (1994)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Directors:

Peter Chan
Chi Lee

Writers:

Peter Chan (story)
Clarence Hui (story)

Release Date:

23 July 1994 (Hong Kong)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot:

A typical everyday HK movie fan Wing idolizes the beautiful female singer Rose and her producer Sam as the fairy tale couple...

Plot Keywords:

Singer | Fan | Gay Asian | Sexual Orientation | Male Impersonation

Awards:

2 wins & 8 nominations

Cast

Leslie Cheung	...	Sam Koo Gai Ming
Carina Lau	...	Rose
Anita Yuen	...	Lam Chi Wing
Eric Tsang	...	Auntie
Jordan Chan	...	Yu Lo
Lawrence Cheng
Kar-Ying Law	...	Joseph (as Ka-ying Lo)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Clarence Hui
Jerry Lamb	...	Sam's Assistant

Also Known As:

He's a Woman, She's a Man (Hong Kong: English title)
Jin qi yu she (Hong Kong: Mandarin title)

Runtime:

107 min

Country:

Hong Kong

Language:

Cantonese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:S | Singapore:M18

Filming Locations:

Hong Kong, China

Company:

United Filmmakers Organization (UFO)

Movie Connections:

Followed by Gum gee yuk yip 2 (1996)

Victor Victoria with extra MSG

Your typical boy meets girl (only masquerading as a guy) story. Although the story is set in a modern-day Cantonese milieu, this story has a number of parallels with Victor Victoria.

A straight man is attracted to someone he believes is a man and is worried about his sexuality. Of course his love interest is a woman so the audience can enjoy a laugh at his expense without being made uncomfortable themselves.

There is an older openly out gay man who is consulted for advice and generally accepted but he is used throughout for comedic affect and seems to be the only gay man in their immediate circle who's `getting any'.

This is another of those films that seems to be using gay themes to titillate the audience and sell tickets without actually showing any truly positive gay images but at least it's not anti-gay. Used to be there was a class of movies called `Blacksploitation' films. I'd suggest that this film and others like it (`In and Out', `Victor/Victoria') will one day be labeled `Gaysploitation' in much the same way.

On a technical level, the film is well done and enjoyable but the DVD copy had some problems. The white subtitles were often unreadable against the white backgrounds and some went by so fast that I found myself constantly pausing and replaying a scene to see what was said. The translation was a bit off as well. There were frequent misspellings and grammar errors and several of the Cantonese songs were not translated at all. What made this particularly annoying was that the subtitles only had one setting (English and Mandarin) so when these un-translated Cantonese songs were going on the Mandarin subtitles continued.