We're Nothing at All

Will Sloan4.0

I got a text from Justin last week saying "RED ALERT! New Herman Yau passion project playing in North York." In my world, this is an emergency. In times like this, we drop everything.Yau self-funded this drama about a young, troubled gay couple on the fringes of Hong Kong, and it sometimes feels like a systematic assemblage of all the things you're not allowed to show in a movie if you're expecting Mainland distribution. The story begins with a bus being blown up, and the rest of the runtime is spent literally sifting through the charred human remains. In other words, the film successfully synthesizes the sensitive chronicler of Hong Kong's underclass who made Whispers & Moans with our ferocious friend who made The Untold Story.If it's not quite as good as Tsui Hark's Dangerous Encounters - First Kind or Fruit Chan's Made in Hong Kong, it definitely shares a lot of those films' good qualities. And how many Hong Kong movies can you say that about nowadays?

Justin Decloux4.0

From Writer/Director/Producer Herman Yau, the director of many sleazy classics like EBOLA SYNDROME and a hundred mainland Chinese blockbusters starring Andy Lau, comes a guttural scream at the state of Hong Kong, told through the love story of two men that the world chewed up and spit out. It's 2026's DANGEROUS ENCOUNTERS OF THE FIRST KIND. And Herman Yau supposedly funded the project out of his own pocket! I was worried that this was going to be misery porn, or a slicker version of THE UNTOLD STORY, as it's got the structure of a detective investigating a case we already know the answer to, but surprisingly, Herman Yau shows up completely dialled in. The pain does pile on to an absurd degree, and some cruel twists seem to be ways to appease the censors, but it's always backed by an achingly human heartbeat. In the episode of The Important Cinema Club Podcast we did on Herman Yau, I said I hoped he'd have another passion project in him, but I assumed that he was too caught up in the gears of the Mainland Chinese movie machine. I was wrong! I look forward to Herman Yau's next opus once he finishes his 20-for-them-1-for-me working method. ****I was amazed that this opened at a bunch of my local theatres in Toronto, and noted it did not have the Mainland Chinese seal of approval at the top. I didn't even know that was allowed these days.

wilson4.0

hkiff50 film #3Sorry Herman Yau I was unfamiliar with your game. I didn’t realize we were allowed to make movies like this in HK hahah. Two of the biggest pop stars in the city starring as a gay couple who get fucked over by society so much they decide to blow up a double decker bus on Valentine’s day. You gotta admire the audacity and I hope this movie makes an incredible amount of money.Also sorry to Ansonbean fans but this guy cannot act 😂