Within the next half-hour, Francis Ng Chun-yu will come round to delivering barbed remarks about Hong Kong's educational system, discuss post-feminist gender politics and draw out the leitmotif in 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining, two very different masterpieces directed by Stanley Kubrick.
But as the filmmaker sits before a mirror while his stylists fiddle with his hair and makeup, he holds forth on a more trivial matter - the quality and variety of pre-packaged snacks available in mainland cities. 'It's got to be spicy to be good,' he says, handing around two packets of what appears to be dried meat. The actor (and now director) promises that he'll bring his publicists more of his finds the next time they meet. It's not hard to imagine the treasure trove of made-in-China finger-foods he must have at home, given the amount of time he spends working on mainland projects.
Although he's doing the press rounds for a Hong Kong production (the social satire Dancing Lion, in which Ng starred and co-directed with Marco Mak Chi-sin), his gaze is a northerly one these days. He has already starred in four films funded and shot on the mainland in the past two years (Hands in the Hair, The Curse of Lola, Karmic Mahjong and The Closet), just finished a fifth (Gourmet at Poison, an urban romance set in Chongqing and also starring Yu Nan from Tuya's Marriage) and is looking for funding for his directorial project, Bema's Tears, to be produced by Beijing Skyway Media, and a Harry Potter-esque fantasy drama set in Qinghai.
His enthusiasm for mainland snacks give way to disillusion when he's asked about his experiences with the country's film industry. 'You say I spent a lot of time on the mainland, and that's true. But I'd say it's more of a 'have to' rather than a 'want to',' says the 45-year-old, his generous grin growing more forced by the minute. 'Hongkongers think the mainland is a place where the streets are paved with gold. All I can say is that there are two interpretations of the concept of gold in Cantonese: the literal sense of wealth and opportunities and the slang meaning dog's excrement - that you just step into trouble.'
Known for being candid both in his films and off the set, Ng - who has acted in more than 100 films since 1991, six years after he graduated from TVB's training programme - has recently aired his doubts about mainland cinema. The acerbic comments he made on the set of Gourmet at Poison - accusing mainland filmmakers of wallowing in an excess of passionate love scenes and peddling a poverty-stricken vision of China to foreign audiences - have been reported widely in the mainland press.
'When I went up [to the mainland] I frequently worked with directors just making their first films - and it's necessary to lower your expectations,' he says. 'It's their first time doing this and a part of me is forced to think, 'Right, you've got to let them run into walls in order to learn the ropes'. But it's quite tiring, really, when this happens all the time and you're forced to remind the director about things all the time.'
Working on Dancing Lion, he says, has been a welcome respite back among his contemporaries. Anthony Wong Chau-sang, one of his best friends and most frequent collaborators, also stars in the film and investors are on his wave-length (the major producer is Mandarin Films' mogul Raymond Wong Pak-ming). Ng says it's 'much smoother' than his experience on the mainland.