Hong Kong Nocturne

As planned, I went to see a movie being shown as part of the Shaw Brothers retrospective at the Tokyo International Film Festival. HONG KONG NOCTURNE starring Cheng Pei Pei (better known these days as Jade Fox in CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON) was a musical done in the 60s by a Japanese director, who was remaking one of his own movies, but this time setting it in HK. It was a really fun film with great tunes and costumes. A really funny scene was when a girl is tricked into going to Tokyo, thinking she’s going to become a star, only to meet up with a pinkueiga (infamous Japanese softcore films of the time) director, complete with beret and Hitler style moustache. Oh my. The director and Cheng both showed up at the end for a Q&A session. Cheng brought her daughter along, who did the English translation, and it was amazing how much she looked like her mother in the film.

I just wish I would have been able to see more films at the festival, but this being Japan, the scheduling of course sucked, with every movie being shown during the day, with the latest showing at around 7 at night. Is this a festival only for university students and the jobless?