Starring: Amy Chum Yan-mi, Kristal Tin Yui-lee, Monie Tung Man-lee, Sydney
Director: Lee Kung-lok
Category: IIA (Cantonese)
Belly dancing is an unlikely metaphor for life, especially in Hong Kong. All the more remarkable then that director Lee Kung-lok takes the premise and turns it in to an emotionally satisfying Cantonese film.
Co-produced by Wong Ching-po and Daniel Yu Wai-kwok, it's an auspicious solo debut for Lee, who co-directed Fu Bo (2003) with Wong and All About Love (2005) with Yu. In My Mother is a Belly Dancer, Lee proves adept at reinventing the socially conscious 'tenement genre' (a staple of post-war Cantonese cinema, reflecting the era's housing conditions) within a 21st-century context.
Set in Choi Hung Estate, the movie is inhabited by working-class folk who do their best to bring colour and vibrancy to their harried lives and drab environment.
The protagonists, a group of women, decide to take belly-dancing lessons, much to the consternation of local gossips, who view the activity as immoral and un-Chinese, and chauvinistic husbands opposed to anything that might provide their wives with a sense of identity outside the home.
