Starring: Miriam Yeung, Eason Chan, Stanley Fung, Huang Bo, Four Tse Liu Shut
Director: Law Wing Cheong

“Different kinds of people will have different kinds of views about 30. Some women will think that [turning] 30 is a kind of crisis. Some of them will think that it’s a good start. We can be [real] women at that time... For me, I think that the 30s are golden years for women because you’ve got experience, and life experiences, whether they’re good or bad, make for wisdom. And also, nowadays in Hong Kong, women in their 30s are independent, so have their own techniques, professional skills in their lives and also can earn their own livelihoods.”

In a recent interview with bc, Miriam Yeung shared her thoughts about reaching this significant chronological milestone and being a woman in her 30s. Not only because the superstar singer-actress is a 30-something-year-old single female but because the winsome character she plays in her latest movie, Hooked on You, is one of those individuals who sets herself certain goals to achieve by the time she get to the big 3-0.

Miu, 27 years of age in 1997, the year the story begins, would like to pay off debts incurred by her gambler-cum-philanderer father (Stanley Fung) and get married to an ideal man who, among other things, must not be a market vendor like herself, her fishmonger father and a rival seller of fish turned valued friend known as Fishman (Eason Chan). Since the bulk of the people she hangs out with – and more than one interested swain – are fellow vendors at Fortune Market, this presents a major obstacle in her romance stakes.

Even as she seeks to net her Prince Charming, Miu, who moonlights as a seller of fish congee, is reduced to just three hours of sleep per night working to pay off her dad’s debts. Thus the days and years pass by surely and steadily bringing with them the inevitable catch-bag of personal losses and rewards.

As might be expected of a movie released into theatres just three days before the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the HKSAR, this Milkyway Image production looks back at the past decade in Hong Kong’s history. Economic downturns, SARS and bird flu are alluded to, even if fleetingly, in this ambitious yet thoroughly human offering. And the cry “Trouble is coming” early on in Law Wing Cheong’s film could be read as not only alluding to the initially menacing but actually benevolent Fishman on his entrance but also in more general terms.

Yet this is a ‘feel good’ feature at heart rather than a depresso-fest. To be sure, not everything turns out peachy keen and to everyone’s liking. And especially when certain characters seek the unattainable in life – Miu’s dream ‘designer item’ is a purse that’s “a Gucci similar to a Prada”! Still, you’d be a cold fish indeed not to feel drawn in – and hooked even! – by this heartwarming drama that successfully transmits the message that change, even enforced, can sometimes be for the best after all.

Yvonne Teh