Born in Macao, educated in Hong Kong and England, now an Australian citizen, Clara Law, whose new film A Floating Life screened at the weekend, knows what it is like to be perched precariously between East and West.
The film, shot in Germany, Hong Kong and Australia, deals in fictional form with the problem. It's not directly autobiographical. “In reality, this didn't happen to me or my family, but emotionally I am very connected to it.”
Law speaks with nostalgia of the Hong Kong film industry she first encountered in late 1970s and early 1980s. “It was a very exciting time, the end of the Kung Fu era and the beginning of the New Wave, when film-makers like Tsui Hark and Ann Hui came to the fore. You felt you could do just anything.”
She left the island in 1982 to come to the National Film and Television School in England. By the time she returned three years later, things were very different. “It was all formula filmmaking - slapstick, thrillers and action-movies. It was much harder for new arrivals like myself who wanted to risk doing certain kinds of non-mainstream films.”
She talks darkly of the undue influence wielded by egotistical actors and their agents. (“The star system was horrible.”) Nor did she believe the prospect of the Chinese takeover in 1997 augured well for Hong Kong cinema.
In 1992, she married screen-writer, Eddie Fong. They went to Australia on honeymoon. While there, they took the opportunity to check out the local film industry and were suitably impressed by what they saw.
They hired Australian technicians and post-production facilities for their 1993 movie, Temptation of a Monk, which was shot in China. Eventually, they decided to move to the country for good.
“I felt I could develop my career much more easily there than in Hong Kong.” she says. “In Hong Kong, I have to toe the line. I'm not part of the mainstream.”
Geoffrey Macnab
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