In with the new

Hong Kong cinema has been on the ascendant this year - at least in terms of numbers. Records show an increase in the number of local productions - up from last year's 52 to 55 - while revenue generated stood at HK$291 million as of December 15, already eclipsing 2009's HK$248 million.

Local filmmakers have also been making their mark again on the international film festival circuit, with Alex Law Kai-yui's Echoes of the Rainbow boosting the local industry's morale with an award at the Berlin Film Festival, and Tsui Hark's action-heavy period drama, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, garnering positive reviews at Venice.

Numbers aside, what really makes 2010 unique for the local film industry is the wide variety of films released. The old guard has been out in force with new work - of varying quality. John Woo Yu-sum (the measured swordplay flick Reign of Assassins) and Ann Hui On-wah (the sporadically funny same-sex romantic comedy All About Love) fared much better than Stanley Kwan Kam-pang (the underperforming Showtime) and Clara Law Cheuk-yiu (the nightmarish Like a Dream).

Meanwhile the younger directors have proved themselves to be tough competition, with efforts as audacious and nuanced as their forerunners'. Among these Young Turks is Clement Cheng Sze-kit. Making his directorial debut just this year, the Hong Kong-born, Toronto-bred Cheng had a hand in two of the more idiosyncratic films of the year. His first was the entertaining and witty martial arts comedy Gallants, which he co-directed with the more established Derek Kwok Chi-kin. The next was Merry-Go-Round, a collaboration (sharing directorial credits with acclaimed independent filmmaker Yan Yan Mak) that shapes up as a flawed but emotionally engaging multiple-strand drama revolving around a coffin home and a herbal store.

And then there's Heiward Mak Hei-yan, the 26-year-old wunderkind who left behind her edgy and stylistically uneven delinquent-drama debut High Noon and waded into the commercial mainstream with Ex. It's easy to dismiss the film as a mere showcase for pop idols - it's financed by the Emperor Entertainment Group's film production arm, and stars three of the company's most visible charges - but Mak never resorts to the simple histrionics of Hong Kong's relationship dramas. While driven by a conventional love triangle, the film offers a nuanced dissection of the Me Generation complete with its fears and anguish about lost ideals and cynical compromises.

Mak's deftness at injecting reality into fiction is put to good use in Love in a Puff, for which she supplied the screenplay to Hong Kong cinema's erstwhile enfant terrible, Edmond Pang Ho-cheung.

Using the newly enacted smoking ban as a springboard, Pang and Mak draw out the idiosyncrasies of modern-day romance among young Hongkongers through the touchy-feely roller-coaster relationship between a man and a woman who rendezvous by a back-alley rubbish bin where they take their cigarette breaks. Again, the film works simply because it plays on its characters' insecurities and flaws as they struggle in a harsh social environment. It's something Pang himself took to extremes with Dream Home, a gory thriller about a young woman who goes on a murderous rampage after a setback in climbing the property ladder.