Mr. Cinema


Mr. Cinema also known as Call Me Left is a 2007 Hong Kong film starring Anthony Wong, Teresa Mo, Ronald Cheng and Karen Mok.

Plot

The story is about a pro-communist leftist Zhou Heung-Kong who grew up in the pre-1997 British colony of Hong Kong starting from the 1950s. He lives with his wife Ying who mostly raises the family by herself. Zhou has fantasies of going to Tiananmen Square, but has always been too poor to do so. They eventually find themselves in a HK transferred over to the People's Republic of China. In the end Zhou realised he sacrificed everything for the communist cause, and his family is left with nothing.

Cast

Production note

The film has been criticised for its "selective history" for covering a long period of HK's history, but does not mention the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests. The Hong Kong 1967 Leftist Riots was only covered briefly, and China's support for its HK-based loyalists is never addressed. The name of Anthony Wong's character Zhou Heung Kong is pronounced similar to "Left Hong Kong".

Critical reception

The film received mixed reviews. One of them, by Vivienne Chow of Muse magazine, applauded Chiu for 'initiating the idea of telling a Hong Kong story from the perspective of the leftists for the first time,' but deemed the movie 'ultimately overambitious'.