Summary
A delightfully batty absurdist comedy that highlights Hong Kong’s social divide that has a universality for wannabe homeowners the world over.
Graduate. Get a job. Buy a flat. Marry. The pattern is familiar all over the world, and it’s a track that countless young people struggle to find their groove on. With THE SINKING CITY: A CAPSULE ODYSSEY, new writer-directors Stephen Ng and Nero Ng skewer the norms of Hong Kong society 20 years after the Handover to China. It’s as cutting as it is wacky.
Based on the novel by XXharuki, the main narrative follows Hong Konger Chi-hin (Pakho Chau) who lives his entire life pretending to by someone else. Paid to make Internet posts in forums under the name ‘Boss Chan,’ his public face is that of a financial consultant. He lies to his girlfriend about a secondment to New York, but in actuality moves into an economy ‘space capsule’ flat to save money. Soon enough he and his eclectic group of companions are on a path that leads to dognapping, running from the law, and gang warfare, none of which makes it any easier to afford a flat.
THE SINKING CITY: A CAPSULE ODYSSEY is a feature-length in-joke for the people of Hong Kong, but it’s a gag that it wants to let you in on. Indeed, it’s not hard to imagine a similar struggle in the near future of Sydney or Melbourne’s endlessly rising house prices. So while the film never lets us forget that this is a very specific time and place in the socio-economic history of Hong Kong, it counterbalances it with over-the-top and absurdist humour. Hell, at one point a dog is praised for his ability to take photos of the group.
The approach works by populating this hyper-kinetic reality with an eclectic group of characters from a world just outside of our own. Fung (Babyjohn Choi), for example, is quite literally a wannabe gangster who hasn’t quite caught onto the fact that post-Handover Hong Kong has moved on from his nostalgic view of organised crime. Ming (Louis Cheung) just wants to find a place to ‘boom boom’ with his girlfriend. Then there’s Andrew Lam as the wonderfully bonkers Shing, the unhinged landlord who is more than reluctant to let his new ‘community’ go.
As it culminates in one hell of a chase/fight sequence in the country, one that features a van crash with anime physics, the film might leave our humdrum existence in the dust in pursuit of its own wicked beat. Even so, the filmmakers have already hooked us in with their insanely likeable (and sometimes just insane) characters to the point that we share in their joy and their hopes for the future. Even if, like the apartments themselves, that outlook is a little narrow.
