re:mote voices

Title: Life Is Cheap... But Toilet Paper Is Expensive
Cast: Cheng Wan Kin, Cora Miao, Victor Wong
Director: Wayne Wang

While it is a great title for a film, Life is Cheap…Toilet Paper is Expensive is in fact a little disappointing. Another one of those films which is described in the advertising one way, but which turns out to be another. Described as “in turns shocking, hilarious, surreal, foul-mouthed, hyper-kinetic thriller, an unforgettable postcard from Hong-Kong”, from which the postcard comment is perhaps the only accurate statement, summing up the static nature of the film.

Wayne Want is, I gather, an american-chinese director, responsible for the films Dim Sum and Joy Luck Club, with this being a more experimental outing. The film was made in 1989, pre-handover Hong-Kong. An american-chinese travels to Hong Kong from San Francisco as a courier, delivering a suit case, which he is handcuffed to, to some triad big boss. However the big boss doesn’t seem to be available, and everyone the courier meets provides him with a different story. As the film goes on it becomes clear that someone is messing with the courier, that there is some big picture which he doesn’t know about, but is certainly going to become involved in.

All of that sets up the premise for the proposed hyper-kinetic thriller. However the delivery of the film is as a series of set pieces, each character the courier meets delivering a monologue to the camera, as though it was a solo theatre performance. Between these soliloquies the film is linked together by the narration of the courier. With the result that the delivery of the film is pretty laid back, perhaps even lacklustre. Especially when a lot of the dialogue is more about a character snap shot of people in Hong Kong, rather than actually plot related. As the film goes on there is some development, some rare scenes where characters actually do things which are plot related, but those do little to resolve the problems.

In some ways I can see how the techniques put into play with Life Is Cheap could have worked. But really only in a different context, for me this never really lives up to the potential of either style or plot.