DIRECTOR LO CHI-LEUNG is nothing if not a man of surprises. Starting out behind the camera with the sexy comedy Viva Erotica (1996), he soon jumped into action thrillers with Double Tap (2000) before turning his attention to things more sinister with the well-received and spooky Inner Senses (2002). Last year, it was more of the same with the thriller Koma.
But just when you thought you had the director pegged, Lo has turned full circle again - heading into uncharted waters with his latest offering, a family-style fantasy Bug Me Not!, in which a host of the city's young talent share the limelight with computer-generated insects.
'I wanted to do Bug Me Not! before I did Koma,' says Lo at the Emperor Group's Wan Chai headquarters. 'But I had success with Inner Senses, so I was approached to do another thriller. Most of the time with thrillers, the story involves a man and a woman and the man chasing that woman, so the audience will know which one's good and which one's bad.
'With Koma, I brought together two women - and you didn't know who was good and who was bad. So that was the attraction for me.'
Koma dealt with the murky topic of the illicit trade in body parts and featured horror-film staples Angelica Lee Sin-je and Karena Lam Ka-yan. And although Lo was happy with the end result, his mind was still on the other project.
'In Hong Kong, we have a limited style of movies that we make,' says Lo. 'There's Hong Kong-style comedy. But if those movies go to the US, nobody will watch them because it's Hong Kong-style comedy and it's very unique to this city. Then there are martial-arts movies, and then there are thrillers. That's really all.
'This film was a chance to do something different. In other countries there's a big market for family movies, so we thought, 'Why not do a Hong Kong family movie'?'
