Review | Film review: The Empty Hands – Stephy Tang is an actress transformed in atmospheric karate-themed drama
Hong Kong actress has never commanded the screen the way she does in this subtle, languid Chapman To film about life’s battles
3.5/5 stars
She put aside her pristine idol image to play a cancer patient in 2007’s In Love with the Dead and she’s cried her heart out in at least a couple of Patrick Kong Pak-leung relationship dramas over the years. Yet singer-actress Stephy Tang Lai-yan has never commanded the screen to quite the extent she does in this karate-themed character drama.
In The Empty Hands, Tang plays Mari Hirakawa, a Hong Kong woman who’s been estranged from her Japanese father (Yasuaki Kurata) since her Chinese mother left the family when she’s a kid. A brown belt karate prodigy until she stopped training with her instructor dad altogether, Mari has been wasting away her life in dead-end jobs and a misguided affair with a married radio DJ (Ryan Lau Chun-kong).
When her father dies suddenly in the spacious Wan Chai flat he has long been using as a dojo, Mari believes she can finally embrace her slacker lifestyle by subdividing the flat and letting it out for a living – only to learn that her father has bequeathed 51 per cent of the property to a certain Chan Kent (Chapman To Man-chat), a once-expelled pupil and an ex-con with a lamentable past.
With Empty Hands role, Hong Kong pop singer Stephy Tang is poised to make the leap to serious actress
With the concision of a short-story adaptation and a languid ambience more often associated with arty independent films, this pet project of To – who produced, directed and co-wrote it with Erica Li Man, a frequent collaborator of Herman Yau Lai-to – plays like a showcase for Tang, whose character is urged by Kent to recover her fighting spirit, briefly yet viscerally, in a boxing match.
