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Cast:
Zeny
Kwok
Lo
Lieh
Carrie
Ng
Chiu
Tien You
Tats
Lau Yi Dat
Tsui
Man Kin
Producer:
Joe
Ma
Director:
Carol
Lai
Score:
  
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GLASS
TEARS
AKA:
N/A
Year:
2001 Reviewer: Andrew
Saroch
After
the wonderful 'The
Floating Landscape', I resolved to watch Carol Lai's
directorial debut 'Glass Tears'. Not only did it make a
reasonable critical impression, but it also appeared at Cannes
as one of the official Hong Kong selection. Whether it lives
up to Lai's exceptional follow-up is the real question though.
A
phone call alerts ex-policeman Wu (Lo Lieh) to the fact that
his grand-daughter Cho has run away from home once again.
Travelling to Hong Kong to see her parents, Wu finds them to
be somewhat apathetic regarding Cho's situation and therefore
resolves to find her himself. Putting his old police training
into practice, Wu manages to dig up a few clues as the her
whereabouts. His task is given an unexpected boost when a
young girl, calling herself P (Kwok), agrees to help find Cho
insisting that the runaway owes her money. At first the
significant age difference means that the two parties fail to
see eye to eye and P tries to escape from Wu's watchful eye
more than once. However, as the search continues, both of them
see that there is a common theme of loneliness and
listlessness in both of their lives. This unlikely union
brings to the surface questions about both of their sad lives
and the real circumstances of Cho's disappearance.
Though
certainly rough around the edges, Carol Lai's work is a far
stronger vision of youth than the aimless, yet critically
lauded 'Gimme
Gimme'. While both productions seem to have the
intention of showing how frustratingly self-important Hong
Kong teenagers seem to be, 'Glass Tears' relies more on a
sense of pathos that gradually develops - a move that,
eventually, proves to be a well chosen one. The friendship
between the initially annoying P and the cool, calm Wu is
intelligently fleshed-out; there are no grand gestures between
the two which helps ground their journey in reality. Lai
intentionally leaves many unanswered questions about all of
her characters, especially Cho's parents. This mostly works as
it tries not to justify some of the less pleasant sides of the
characters' edges, though it does sometimes seem as if P's
wastrel mother is offered as some kind of excuse for her faux
arrogance.
While
'Glass Tears' is a solid debut for Carol Lai, it has a few
signs of directorial immaturity within it. Despite good
photography on the part of Tony Cheung, Carol Lai lets the
atmospherics get diluted by pointless camera trickery. The
mood of uncertainty and the admirably off-kilter world created
by the production team is undone by these empty MTV-isms. It
almost seems that Lai is trying out every camera style in the
book without making any of them look convincing. Due to this
problem, 'Glass Tears' looks very much like a directorial
debut - albeit quite a promising one.
Even
though the bemusing over-stylisation and occasionally grating
character 'quirks' detract from the overall effect of 'Glass
Tears', there are still a few excellent performances to
savour. Lo Lieh is an actor who was never really given the
thespian credit he deserves; often his masterful performances
in classic Shaw Brothers films were foolishly overlooked. In
one of his very last roles, Lieh excels, taking a slightly
underwritten character and breathing life into him. At the
other end of the age scale, Zeny Kwok impresses as P - her
work here, coupled with the performance she gave in 'Merry
Go-Round' is an indication of her promise. Meanwhile in the
background, Carrie Ng and Tats Lau Yi-Dat are convincingly
cold as Cho's distant parents. in conclusion then, 'Glass
Tears' is a debut that scores with its fine performances, but
is let down by uneven work behind the lens. Nevertheless,
Carol Lai followed this up with 'The Floating Landscape', a
work that showed what an important local film-maker she will
undoubtedly become.
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