words rachel mok

In his latest film, Simon Yam faced his greatest challenge yet.

Talking to Simon Yam can be a bizarre experience. You know he is among the most charming stars in the local film industry, but he doesn’t act like it. One moment he can be playing around with his iPhone showing you his chromoskedasic paintings (light reflected colour images on black-and-white photographic paper without pigments or dyes), the next he’s openly changing his shirt for the next photo shoot while sharing his long-held love of fish. Yet his unbeatable social skills so continue to win the hearts of both audiences and those in the business that we rarely hear censures of the model-turned-actor for the notorious roles he has played in the past two decades.

For Yam has essayed some of the most extreme characters based on real-life figures in Hong Kong history: the ‘Rainy Night Butcher’ – the serial killer and rapist, Lam Kor-wan – in Dr Lamb (1992), the convict in the notorious Happy Valley Paper Box Murder in The Final Judgement (1993) and Yip Kai Foon in The King of Robbery (1996), among others. Still, he says his recent role in Ann Hui’s Night and Fog is his ‘ultimate character’.

‘This character is very humane – those were superficial,’ says Yam, who sees the difference as a reflection of the variations in film culture between the ’90s and the present. ‘[The directors] didn’t add details of daily life in those films, nor did they let me. It was what happened with a lot of Hong Kong films at that time – they didn’t want those life details. I know Ann will put a great deal of humanity in the film and that is why I think it is interesting.’

Night and Fog is based on a family tragedy in Tin Shui Wai in 2004. Yam plays an unemployed construction worker who, on losing his job, has to rely on CSSA and becomes increasingly paranoid towards his young and beautiful wife. He ends up killing her and their twins daughters, and, as the police conclude after the investigation, injures himself with a knife in an attempt to also set himself up as a victim but takes his own life instead. ‘It was a challenge to my limits,’ Yam says, recalling his reaction to the script, while admitting that before the film, like a lot of others in the city, he had seldom been to the New Territories – ‘Except the Mai Po [Nature Reserve], it is such a beautiful place.’

But to prepare for the role, the 54-year-old actor drove to the area almost daily, at a different time each day, for three weeks before shooting started. Settling himself in a cha chan tan, he would chat to locals to learn about their life and community. Didn’t they all recognize him as the star of hundreds of films and TV dramas? ‘Yes they did, which was even better – because they trusted me and told me lots of things they wouldn’t normally say to others. I hoped to find the truth from them.’ And he blames the isolation of both the community and the people for the tragedies in the area. ‘[People] may sit in the park for hours, reading free newspapers in which information is superficial – and there are only four TV channels for them to choose from… they don’t know what’s happening in the world and end up not wanting to learn.’

As he dug deeper into the life and mind of his character, Yam became increasingly troubled by it. In particular, a scene in which the character kneels and begs his wife to return home with him in front of a social worker preyed on Yam’s mind. ‘I couldn’t sleep for the whole week trying to figuring out if a man would really do something like that,’ he says. He ended up visiting a psychologist to release the stress but came to the conclusion that the construction worker did love his wife, as previously he had given up a lot for her. From his visits to the area, Yam believes many ‘beautiful love stories’ exist in spite of the dark side picked out by Night and Fog. ‘When people become intolerant of each other’s culture and start to forget the good things others have done in the past, that’s when tragedy happens.’ So he hopes Night and Fog will serve as a benchmark in the local film history for discussing humanity. ‘Just like PTU – 10 years or 100 years later, people still talk of Simon Yam and suggest to each other that they should go to see PTU, a film about humanity and team spirit.’

Night and Fog is now showing