Women Who Flirt

So, Pang Ho-Cheung joined the older generation of Hong Kong filmmakers and went off to earn some yuan. In line with expectations, his latest work lacks a strong local atmosphere and a sense of the everyday trivialities of his preceding Hong Kong films, which had previously made him one of the leading filmmakers of the post-colonial era. Instead of naturalness, we have the nondescript world of Chinese lifestyle films that give the mainland audience the illusion of living the high life. On closer inspection, however, Women Who Flirt surprisingly turns out to be one of Pang’s most sophisticated projects. Firstly, this is thanks to the fact that it brings Pang’s characteristic flippancy and shallowness into the realm of the aseptic Chinese capitalist dream created by luxurious bars, fashionable clothes, flying first class and staying in hotel suites. Though double-entendres and one-liners take the place of adult straightforwardness of conversations about relationships and sex due to the watchful eye of the Chinese censors, it still offers extraordinary corporeality in the context of Chinese artificial popular genres. In addition to that, the film deserves recognition thanks to its origins. Pang was inspired by the book Everyone Loves Tender Women, which is one in a series of instruction manuals by someone who calls himself Luo Fu-man (or “Loverman”), which make money off of gender stereotypes and the idealisation thereof, leading female readers to a certain absurd ideal through self-stylisation. It is necessary to add that the given ideal is to a significant extent established by popular Chinese lifestyle romances and melodramas. Instead of a direct adaptation, Pang, together with his female co-screenwriters Jody Luk and Zhang You-You, created a work that is in direct opposition to the book on which it is based. They created a tomboy as the main female protagonist, while transforming all of the lessons from the book into calculating Barbie-doll characters who play the role of ridiculous bimbos if they are from China or antagonists if they are from Taiwan. It is the level of genre and anti-normative sabotage brought about by Pang’s Chinese project that in the end makes it a much more likable and ambitious work than his previous films, where he only idly exploited his own style. (2016.06.26)