words yvonne teh

Underwear inspires confidences among four women in Hong Kong’s latest local movie.

Chan Hing Kar’s new film – for which he shares co-directing and scriptwriting credits with his long-time collaborator Janet Chun – is about four women, their lives and loves. That description may make La Lingerie sound like the Hong Kong version of Sex & the City but Chan is quick to deny that the hit TV series turned hit movie served as the inspiration for the romantic comedy that will begin its local theatrical run on August 8.

Indeed, the filmmaker’s emphatic “No, no,” is quickly followed by the revelation that he hasn’t even finished watching the first season of the American TV show! Chan says that he and Chun had been thinking about La Lingerie for over five years – and maybe even longer, as La Lingerie actually has its roots in La Brassiere (2001), his first directorial effort, co-helmed and scripted with Patrick Leung (with whom he also worked on Simply Actors, last year’s local hit comedy).

“We did a lot of research, especially on the female side,” Chan says about La Brassiere, the ‘battle of the sexes’ romantic comedy in which two men (played by Lau Ching Wan and Louis Koo) were hired by a lady boss (Carina Lau) to work alongside a woman (Gigi Leung) as bra designers. The way it turned out though, “with La Brassiere, we only took the point of view of men!”

To redress the balance, Chan says they wanted to make a film that focused more on women. More specifically, he and his colleagues decided on a movie that gave “the female point of view about underwear”. But it was only after they changed the story five or six times, he says, that they finally settled on a movie about four females who like to hang out at a sexy lingerie shop where one of them works. And which, like La Brassiere, features a man (in this case, comedian Ronald Cheng) donning women’s underwear at one point!

With a cast led by popular singer-actress Stephy Tang and Ronald Cheng, La Lingerie is aimed squarely at the Hong Kong market and is expected to do well at the local box office: $10 million – the mark at which local films are considered to have achieved major success these days – is its targeted minimum gross. This Chan hopes to achieve with a two-pronged appeal. “For the script, for the story, we are targeting a female audience,” he laughingly says. “But for the visuals, for the subject matter, I think males cannot resist!” (And should anyone have any doubt, just check the movie poster which prominently features Tang, model-turned-actress Janice Man, JJ Jia, new singer Kathy Tong and COSPLAY star Maggie Lee, all clad in enticing lingerie!)

La Lingerie will open on the first day of the Beijing 2008 Olympics and will be among the rare Hong Kong films to be released in theatres this summer. While Chan realizes that some movie folks wouldn’t want their films released in this time period, he doesn’t think he has anything to be afraid of. “People can watch TV, watch the Olympics and go to the cinema in the same day,” he believes.

Not one to come up with excuses, Chan baldly asserts that if La Lingerie does not make $10 million at the local box office, it will be because it is not good enough and “if the film is not, then it’s our fault”. He also emphasizes that La Lingerie is a commercial film – but, contrary to what some people might believe, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good film. Not only art-house films are good films, he points out. And if Hong Kong cinema – which is currently having its worst year in decades – is to endure, it will be on the back and success of films like this one which seeks to entertain as well as make money while targeting an audience widely inclusive of both males and females in its home territory.
La Lingerie opens in local cinemas on August 8.