My Name Ain't Suzie (Blu-ray)

In her ambitious follow up to Maybe It's Love, Angie Chen offers a rebuke to the colonial imagination of films such as The World of Suzie Wong (1960). Instead, she brings the Hong Kong of the 50s and 60s to life on her own terms with the story of Shui-Mei (Patricia Ha), a “salt water girl” from the outskirts of the city, who finds a way out of poverty in the Red Light district of Wan Chai, Hong Kong. Over the years, she rises through the ranks, discovering a world of equal hardship and sisterly camaraderie, where colourful characters abound – among them Jimmy (Anthony Wong, in his debut role), a mixed-race kid looking for his father in the crowd of thirsty American sailors. Penned by John Chan Koon Chung (My Heart Is That Eternal Rose), My Name Ain’t Suzie brings a New Wave sensibility to the waning years of the Shaw Brothers Studio with a decade spanning epic that resourcefully reconstructs a bygone era of Cantonese cinema. A rags-to-riches story blending romance and brothel drama, Chen’s film is above all a tale of feminine resilience at the nexus of historical events and shifting colonial powers.