Starring: Annie Liu Hsin-you, Simon Yam Tat-wah, Irene Wan Pik-ha Director: Edmond Pang Ho-cheung Category: IIB (Cantonese) Although it's one of the most offbeat local films of the year, Edmond Pang Ho-cheung's latest exploration of the battle between the sexes is a misfire that only occasionally lives up to its darkly humorous premise. As the producer-director-scriptwriter successfully demonstrated in You Shoot I Shoot (2001), Men Suddenly in Black (2003) and Beyond Our Ken (2004), he regards men merely as hapless inhabitants of a world in which it's women, more often than not, who pull the strings. The battle of the sexes finds apocalyptic echoes in Exodus, a curious title since the film has few biblical or cultural connotations. Co-written by G.C. Goo-bi (Vincci Cheuk Wan- chi) and Jimmy Wan Chi-wan, the tale flirts with misogyny and fails to pull off Pang's usual black comedy feat (like last year's Isabella) of taking a seemingly implausible situation and making it work in a contemporary Hong Kong setting. The basic idea maintains Pang's trademark wit and sense of the bizarre, matched by a distinctive visual style (in this case, employing stylised sets and many outdoor scenes shot at a bleak reservoir more reminiscent of foreign Chinatowns than of Hong Kong). When peeping tom Kwan Ping-man (Nick Cheung Ka-fai) is questioned by a cop, Tsim Kin- yip (Simon Yam Tat-wah, above), about his penchant for hanging around ladies' restrooms, his far-fetched explanation - that he's gathering evidence about a women's syndicate intent on annihilating the male of the species - is either the ranting of a madman or an attempt to escape jail. Tsim suspects the latter - for a while, at least. But he changes his mind as his investigation brings him into contact with an assortment of women who are either murderers, sex objects, shrews or all of three, including the alleged pervert's wife (Irene Wan Pik-ha), a high-ranking police officer (Maggie Shiu Mei-kei), and even Tsim's own spouse (Annie Liu Hsin-you, above), a vacant beauty whose still waters run deep. That the audience is less inclined to follow Tsim's lead is a symptom of the movie's inability to establish a mood. The absurdity of the syndicate, its goals, methods and membership, calls for a far more over-the-top treatment than Pang gives it. Of all the film's characters, Shiu's comes nearest the mark, with an almost robotically icy demeanour accentuated by her uniform and more eccentric civilian garb. She provides an interesting contrast to Yam's polished underplaying of a conscientious public servant doing his utmost to remain an island of sanity amid increasingly crazed circumstances. But most of the other characters are neither here nor there, despite spirited turns by Cheung and Candace Yu On-on as Tsim's nagging mother-in-law. 'Just because things are ridiculous doesn't mean they aren't real,' Kwan says. It's Exodus' weakness that neither the ridiculous nor the real are expressed forcefully enough. Exodus opens today
