Five shining examples of the Gallic influence on Hong Kong cinema:
Be My Love (1968): Made at a time when Cantonese-language films were increasingly marginalised by Mandarin-language productions, Chor Yuen's romantic drama was audacious in its use of storytelling and visual language. The director draws on Resnais, Godard and Chabrol in this story about an erstwhile high-living writer's descent into despair after discovering the true identity of his lover and her abusive husband.
Miu Kam-fung from Seven Women (1976): Employing all the chicanery of Godard's 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, Patrick Tam Ka-ming's instalment of this TVB five-parter pays homage to the French New Wave provocateur. Check the Brechtian opening scene in which a voiceover tells viewers they're watching actor Miu Kam-fung playing a character, alongside images of supermarkets and apartments awash in the detritus of consumer capitalism.
The Last Affair (1983): What's French about Tony Au Ting-ping's film is not what it owes to films by certain Gallic masters, but the fact that it's set in France. Written by Fung Suk-yin, a Hong Kong-born writer who relocated to Paris, the film follows a woman (Carol Cheng) whose affair with a struggling musician (Chow Yun-fat) in Paris sparks off a marital then mental breakdown. The French capital could not be depicted as a more alienating place, with intellectuals giving up their ideals to survive in a foreign land.
In the Mood for Love (2000): Godard's influences are plentiful in Wong Kar-wai's first three films, but it's in this 2000 film that his Francophile tendencies come to the fore. Channelling Breathless into a story set in 1960s Hong Kong, In the Mood for Love combines lush romanticism with the trademark visual idiosyncrasies delivered by Wong, production designer William Chang and cinematographer Christopher Doyle.
Sparrow (2009): The most playful of Johnnie To's recent outings, this intimate film about a clique of local pickpockets and their battle of wits against a triad chieftain is the director's most explicit homage to the French films which inspired him in his youth. With a soundtrack by French composer Xavier Jumaux, Sparrow features a protagonist who, when not pinching wallets, is a flaneur (an idler) who cycles around Hong Kong's older neighbourhoods and takes artistic pictures of buildings in decay. Drawing from Jean-Pierre Melville and Jacques Demy in equal measure, Sparrow wasn't well-received in Hong Kong - but has gained cult status abroad.
