Allen Fong Movies

A tiny, part-time opera troupe in China's coastal Fujian province gets a job to perform in the village of Xitang from a wealthy businessman. The leader of the troupe, Xueyan, therefore gathers her performers and sets off. Trouble arises upon their arrival when Xueyan learns that she is expected do a strip-tease during the performance. Fortunately, one of her dear old friends Sampeng, himself a businessman, shows up to clear up the potentially sticky situation. Before getting into business, Sampeng had run a puppet-show theater. After helping Xueyan, the two renew their acquaintance and she professes her long-held secret love for him. Later, as Sampeng views the opera, he finds himself quietly yearning to return to performing. But his desire is complicated by the dark machinations of his conniving wife. Xueyan also has her problems, as her daughter desires to follow in her footsteps while Xueyan would rather she further her academic education. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Asian-American filmmaker Wayne Wang returns to the city of his birth for this surreal, violent, and darkly comic look at the seamy underside of life in Hong Kong. A young man of Chinese/Japanese heritage (Spencer Nakasako) working at a racetrack in San Francisco is hired by gangsters to deliver a briefcase to the Big Boss (Lo Wai), a notorious leader of Hong Kong's organized crime syndicate. Dressed in western clothes and proclaiming himself "The Man with No Name," the courier arrives in Hong Kong with the briefcase chained to his wrist, but this doesn't stop a group of enterprising young hoodlums from stealing it from him. As he searches for his precious cargo, the man tries desperately to rendezvous with the Big Boss, only to hear a dizzying variety of excuses from his second-in-command (Lam Chung) as to why the Boss can't or won't see him. The courier also has to deal with his elderly Uncle Cheng (Cheng Kwan Ming), who would rather show off his latest dance routines than help his nephew save his own neck. The man also witnesses all sorts of bizarre and bewildering behavior, from a restaurant that serves feces to a prostitute who announces she doesn't mind being abused, though she's tired of not being paid for it. Directed by Wayne Wang in collaboration with actor Spencer Nakasako, Life Is Cheap...But Toilet Paper Is Expensive was released by Wang with a self-imposed "A" rating (for "Adult") after being threatened with an "X" by the MPAA ratings board; the film contains no explicit sex, but the MPAA was troubled by the film's gangland violence and pervasive bad taste. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Just Like Weather concerns a young Hong Kong married couple, played by Christine Li and Chan Hung-Lin. They emigrate to the US, hoping for a better life. Any such hopes are dampened by the couple's realization that America is not necessarily the land of opportunity that they'd been led to believe. Experimental director Allen Fong (who also appears in a supporting part) was assisted in U.S.-filmed location scenes by award-winning filmmaker Wayne Wang. Just Like Weather was released outside English-speaking countries as Aiqing Qianfeng Xunhao. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Father and Son is a breakaway from the usual kung-fu killer-thrillers that roar out of Hong Kong studios on a weekly basis. The men in the story are San-muk (Shek Lui), a strong-willed father with a no-end, low-income job as a clerical worker, and a son Ka-hing (Lee Yu-tin as the young boy (Cheng Yu-or as the teenager) who is often at odds with his father's authoritarian hold over him. In spite of his son's failure in school, the father is determined he should get a good education so he marries his oldest daughter off to a rich man ensuring that the son will have his college years paid for -- in the United States. When the son finally does well and graduates, he sends his diploma to his father, who is so completely overwhelmed and excited at how his life-long dreams are finally coming true, that the news causes a fatal heart attack. He and his son had parted four years earlier in friendship, their differences buried and with a mutual understanding. Now the son returns to the backwater home where he grew up; his father who was responsible for his advancement in the world is no longer around to enjoy his success. The young man sits in his room and remembers life in their squatter housing, and as he thinks back on his childhood and the poverty of his family -- the film unfolds in flashbacks that explain how he got to where he is now and what the relationship to his father meant over the years. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide