It happened one morning. Ho Yuhang decided he couldn’t be an engineer anymore; instead he’d be a filmmaker. It was a gamble, he knew, but one he had to take. “With engineering I thought, I can get an okay job, get married, have five kids and die, and that would be okay.” And then he realised it wouldn’t be okay. Not at all.

The bright young director is tagged as one of the leading players in Malaysia’s fledgling independent film scene. In town to release Rain Dogs, a quiet observant tale of self-discovery, he arrives grinning. In navy shorts and a white t-shirt, he looks indistinguishable from other mid-autumn holidaymakers enjoying the sunny morning. Full of energy – he was up at six today watching Japanese movies – full of enthusiasm, and completely lacking any kind of ego, one of the first things he does is request permission to wear sunglasses.

So how does an engineer go from the nine-to-five grind into more creative endeavours? First stop was assisting in a production company. But when Ho purchased his first video camera, his thoughts were already treading a new path, seeking a way out of the commercial arena. “I have no problem with commercial cinema, but a lot is very bad. I’m very particular about the script.”

That attention to detail is reflected in Rain Dogs, a film that was more than a year in the making. It tells the story of Tung, a 19-year-old who leaves his ageing mum and his sleepy suburb to hunt out his brother in Kuala Lumpur. Along the way he faces violence, deceit, and lies, but learning of his brother’s death provides the ultimate test. “I followed each one of [the characters] as dutifully as I could, concentrating on the way they lived their lives. Rain Dogs is for me a story about love and loss and all the sadnesses of life,” he explains.

Yu plays with words like dogs play with bones, teasing them and chewing on sentences littered with phrases like “sort of,” and “I suppose,” that help buy him the time to articulate detailed answers. He thrives on the power of swear words, liberally tossing them into conversation. He loves writing too: “It’s complete solitude, and you just go nuts – it’s pretty satisfying,” he says.

Alongside his camera experiments, Ho plunged into film history, giving himself further challenges. “It’s… it’s sort of like, if all you’ve been reading is the Da Vinci Code, and then you start with Dostoevsky or Madame Bovary – they’re great but you’re not trained to read them,” he says. Surprising himself, he got stuck on silent films, film noir and black and white Japanese flicks, attracted by their quiet grace and gentle rhythm.

His own subdued stories reflect those qualities. In Rain Dogs, one of his favourite scenes takes place in a tiny Malaysian fishing village. Managing to film documentary style, he captures real fisherman baiting hooks and casting lines, set against a barren wilderness. “It is probably the most quiet part of the movie, but I really like it.”

His first public film foray was a provocative short for US public TV, and was also silent. Black and white, it featured a young girl’s eyes, in close up, looped so they’d stare back at the viewer for hours. A fitting beginning for a maverick who prefers using untrained actors – “In Malaysia, a lot of the trained actors are pretty damn disappointing.” He plays his own Schubert piano accompaniments to cut production costs, and is happiest outside the mainstream. “I guess I am an outsider, I have sort of stuck it out by myself,” he agrees, adding he feels it is important to bring outside influences into Malaysian films.

A mind that used to be wrapped up in equations has its uses in piecing together story structure – usually the first move for Ho in developing his ideas. They flow into character-driven stories that often concentrate around family set-ups. Brought up in the small suburb Petaling Jaya, just outside of Kuala Lumpur, it’s funny, thinks Ho, that he is drawn to those relationships, since his own family was so “incredibly normal.”
Typically Chinese, he says, any drama that did occur was in the kitchen, where his mum always seemed to be. “I remember just sitting in the kitchen, on this spittoon – it was a spittoon we used as a potty, and I would just sit and watch my mum working and shit for one hour,” he says laughing. At first they weren’t sure about Ho’s forays into film, but that changed
when awards began flooding in. Ho earned himself prizes for his first feature, Min, scooping Nantes Festival’s Special Jury Prize, and a special mention in Torino. Sanctuary, his next picture, went even further, drawing recognition in Rotterdam, Pusan
and Fribourg.

Sitting forward, he happily discusses films and books and life – he devours Westerns and has a renewed interest in Korean directors Hong Sang-soo and Bong Joon-ho. He is keen to do a crime film in Iowa, and loves reading Faulkner. He laughs about the miserable wintertime weather in Paris and at Hong Kong’s rushing crowds.

When the publicist reminds us that we’ve run overtime by almost an hour and have nearly missed lunch, he apologises. It’s only as he bounds away from the table that we realise we’ve barely touched on the reason he is here. “It’s just my job,” he scoffs, unconcerned. And he doesn’t have to worry. Three days later, Ho receives the New Talent award at the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival’s closing ceremony, celebrating “originality and uniqueness of representation.”

Imbued with the director’s spirited personality, and stamped with his own very special outlook on life, the film says more about him than he will ever have to. And standing there, humbly collecting the award, it looks certain that his life-changing gamble paid off.

Rain Dogs is written and directed by Ho Yuhang, and stars Hong Kong’s Liu Wai Hung and Cheung Wing Hong, with Yasmin Ahmad, Pete Teo and newcomer Kuan Choon Wai. It’s now showing at Broadway Cinematheque.