Starring: Athena Chu Yan, Candice Yu On-on, Monie Tung Man-lee, Don Li Yat-long
Director: Herman Yau Lai-to
Category: III (Cantonese)
A refreshingly mature delineation of the commercial sex industry, this gritty drama is light years ahead of the prurient gigolo-and-whore fantasies that once constituted a mini-trend in Hong Kong cinema.
This is a new peak in the career of prolific director-cinematographer Herman Yau Lai-to (the past month alone has seen the release of Gong Tau, which he directed, and Dancing Lion, which he shot), a filmmaker who veers between exploitation schlock and thought-provoking drama. Whispers and Moans belongs to the latter camp, a socially aware movie that shares a kinship with leftist Shanghai features such as Stand Up, Sisters (1951), but with a frankness unimaginable at the time and still censorable in China, half a century later.
Even more significant is the attitude inherent in the screenplay by Yau and Yang Yee-shan, based on Yang's book of the same name. The shame isn't that these women (and men) use their bodies to earn a living, but that society doesn't treat them and their profession as deserving the respect and protection afforded other workers and vocations.