Calendar hassard, Limbo and Mad Fate of the same Hong Kong director Soi Cheang collide in the theaters. The first for a French national release dated 12 July, the second for its preview presentation at NIFFF, in its Asian competition. The occasion of a critical cross-hunt between these two feature films.
The sojourn of souls
Let's start with Limbo, completed in 2021 but crossing a path to the French halls only two years later. We follow the good of Will Yam (Mason Lee), a blue forced to team with the tempestuous Cham Lau (Gordon LamOn a strange series of murders: women to whom the left hand was removed. As the investigation progresses, Cham will fall on Wong To (Cya Liu) : a young thief linked to the investigation and who Cham knows well. And for cause! She's the one who messed up her life by driving her wife...
Black and brutal, Self Cheang Leaves his camera in the bottom of Hong Kong. Filmed in black and white, mostly nighttime and soaked in rain, Limbo impose on his characters the verticality of the buildings between which they evolve to crush them a little more. Real ants, appearing elsewhere in the typography of the title at the beginning of the film, stinging to run in vain in these dark alleys and congested with waste. If the city sometimes appears as a distant and bright promise, it does not emerge from the plans of the Limbo that an alienating and inhuman architecture that seems to fuel the insanity inherent in the characters. Worse, make it inevitable!
Concrete violence
This carcan of concrete, outsized, inadequate, in which one can only move by car (the old Pajero de Cham also lives as a character in his own right on the screen) gradually becomes the cocoon of the various protagonists, where their vices and neuroses can finally hatch. It follows a destructive madness (of the killer, of course, but almost as much of the cops, dealers and other inhabitants of the neighborhood) shooting inexorably at the rejected members of society relegated to the filthy lowlands: prostitutes, drug addicts, homeless people, etc. Vertical, overwhelming violence on what is weaker than yourself.
Limbo thus becomes a thriller where violence is inexorable. The strength of his message, no doubt, and probably also his greatest weakness. For in this world of rotting, difficult for the spectator to engage his empathy for a character. Imperfect, Limbo Still without a doubt, will remain the best thriller that we can discover in theatres this summer and the promise of real aesthetic vertigo! See you on July 12th...
Funny spell
In parallel, Mad Fate presented in the Asian competition of NIFFF A few days ago became Soi Cheang's last baby. There is the same population of marginals and the same bottoms, but the neon bariole replaces the sober black & white Limbo. Here we follow the duo composed by The Master (Gordon Lam, again!) and the young Siu-tung (Lokman Yeung), meeting at the bloody murder scene of a prostitute. If the young man, in turn, seems to be determined to shed blood, lured by the violent visions caused by the crime scene, The Master is convinced that it is his duty to prevent it. S A story of fatum, or almost inevitable adversity.
« God made you a psychopath with no empathy. Don! Don't waste it! »
Rain films
And as for Limbo, Piove (aka Flowing) or Acid, both also presented at NIFFF, rain plays a central role in this film. Mad Fate opens on a hallucinating scene of a cemetery washed by a diluvian rain, where The Master tries a ritual to save a poor (and soon condemned) prostitute. Alternating comic projections and surrealist paintings convoking in the image of the Beksiński, the rain will become during the film trigger element that will push the serial killer to act.
If the first sequences (the cemetery, the first murder) carried by a ubiquitous music electrifies his spectator completely, Mad Fate will gradually become more repetitive and will seek less to create surprise than just to close its story. Yet, constant comic projections (including a CGI cat) distinguish him perfectly from Limbo with which they share a construction and a related subject.
Between Mad Fate and Limbo, the fan of Cheang Soi will have enough to break the crust until the arrival of Kowloon Walled City, his next feature film which should be a pure martial arts film.
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