Floating City

Starring: Aaron Kwok Fu-shing, Charlie Young Choi-nei, Annie Liu Xin-you Director: Yim Ho Category: (Cantonese and English)

Floating City is a historical drama without history and a human portrait without humane details.

Directed by award-winning filmmaker Yim Ho, the film starts with a miscarriage: a pregnant fisherwoman (Josie Ho Chiu-yee) loses her child amid stormy seas. Fearful that she cannot have more children, she adopts a mixed-race baby, who grows up to become a caring son - known as Bo (Aaron Kwok) - and a loving brother to six siblings.

However, when Bo's father drowns, the children are separated. Bo gets a job as an office assistant at the Imperial East India Company. Hard working and self-reliant, he rises through the ranks and becomes the expatriate-dominated company's first Chinese taipan on the eve of Hong Kong's handover in 1997.

The plot is rich with drama, yet the film lacks an air of authenticity because Yim treats history as merely the backdrop of one man's struggle. The director refuses to meet history head on, throwing only passing glances at events such as the 1967 riot and the 1997 handover without truly immersing the viewer in the social and political complexities of those times.

One example is Bo's response to a friend's arrest during the anti-British protests. Yim brushes aside any questions about Bo's attitude towards the conduct and practices of a colonial trading company with a corny scene where Bo, looking into the mirror, asks himself 'who am I?'. Later in a flashback sequence, the humble Bo tells his British superior that he has been 'raised by the company'. So much for a moral fight for identity.