High Noon is the first full-length film from 24-year-old female director Heiward Mak, as part of the Winds of September trilogy initiated by Eric Tsang. In the trilogy, three directors, one from each of the Mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong, each make a film based on the same storyline: the friendship between seven boys, one of whom has to die. As it turns out High Noon is a milder and lighter version of Besieged City, the young director trying to ambitiously cover every problem youth faces today.

As the seven friends go through various emotional turmoils, the action is seen through the eyes of the introverted and sensitive 17-year-old Lo Wing, who is troubled by his father’s sudden retirement and the appearance of a young stepmother and stepbrother from the Mainland. Heartthrob Smoothie indulges in casual sex and relationships which results in a girl’s suicide after a video clip of the two of them having sex is circulated on the internet; fat and naïve Sticky worries about working after school for a living and the rich and slick Addie is addicted to drugs as an escape from his loneliness. Twenty-year-old Soy Sauce is an immigrant from the Mainland who’s first love sells her body to strangers to pay for her friends to go clubbing. The death in a gang fight of Nerd, the best boy and hardest working among the group, turns their world upside down.

As a protégé of Patrick Tam, Mak brings a breath of fresh air to our film industry in terms of style, though whether she can match it with substance remains to be seen. The director’s creativity shines in her capturing of images by mobile phone, the quick cuts and twisted colour tone as Lo Wing crashes into passengers in a tunnel and the simulation of instant messaging for the boys’ debate on who put Smoothie’s video online. However, the film – intentionally or unintentionally – does not raise any new understanding of the issues today’s youth are facing. Ambitious to cover all the issues in one film, Mak ends up fragmenting the story instead of finding in-depth insight into her characters and their problems. Social commentary isn’t necessary in a film of course, but when timely topics (say, the internet sex scandal) are addressed, it is difficult for an audience not to see the film as a response to social phenomena.

And in the case of High Noon, that response makes the film look like another teen programme on RTHK. The young actors, however, do an excellent job playing very extreme characters, while the supporting cast with the likes of television veterans Michelle Yim and Vincent Wan Yeung-Ming bring maturity to the youth-dominated film. As a debut full-length feature from a young director, High Noon should easily pass any standard and local film buffs will be waiting for Mak’s follow-up.

Rachel Mok