What food tells you about a person that words can’t – foodie film couple on their obsession, and building movies around it in Hong Kong
- Food reveals things about a character that dialogue cannot – one reason filmmakers Leung Ming-kai and Kate Reilly use it in movies
- Over a late breakfast at a cafe on a Hong Kong public housing estate where part of their next movie will be shot, they talk about their own love of food
The late morning sun streams into the Silver Cafe in Wah Fu Estate, the housing complex built in Hong Kong’s Southern district in the late 1960s that was once upheld as the blueprint for low-cost public living.
The lazy din of elderly residents swapping gossip with the affable staff hums in tandem with the clink of milk-tea cups on saucers and the scrape of metal cutlery on melamine plates.
Ceiling fans whirr above as the three of us – American filmmaker Kate Reilly, Hong Kong filmmaker Leung Ming-kai and myself, squeezed into a tiny booth made for two – ponder the possibilities of breakfast.
Too late. At 11am, we’ve just missed the cut-off for the morning value combos, but Leung orders a bowl of satay beef instant noodles anyway, and charms the cha chaan teng auntie into giving him an omelette on the side (“Only for breakfast!” she barks at first when he tries to order it, but then slyly slides a plate over a few minutes later).
Leung and Reilly are both food fanatics. Leung studied filmmaking at Columbia University, in New York, which is where the two met, in 2003, on the set of an Anocha Suwichakornpong film – Leung was shooting for the Thai director while Reilly was one of the actors.
They later became roommates and eventually husband and wife.