This film has the look of a low-budget film by an inexperienced film-maker. However, it has an interesting story, two interesting main characters, and ultimately is worth watching.This film follows the relationship between an English professor Hugh who happens to be a bitter, alcoholic writer in Hong Kong, and Mark, one of his prize students. At first, Mark is merely another student in one of Hugh's classes, but Mark's talent soon brings him to Hugh's attention, and once Mark gets to know Hugh a little better, he is clearly smitten with Hugh. While Hugh tries to push Mark away at first, one night, Mark enters Hugh's apartment to find him drunk in the bathtub, and they give way to their passion. Hugh wants to put a stop to this but Mark pursues it. Having failed in making no progress in his writing abilities, Hugh attempts suicide. Mark then saves his life and takes care of him. This in turn brings them closer and the film ends with them looking for an apartment together. Whether they are living together or not is left upto viewers imagination.
The acting is ok but the motivation behind Mark getting so smitten by Hugh despite the very obvious huge age gap is not very clear. Also the film really doesn't explore many of the issues related to the disparity in either age or culture, which is a pity. It seems like the director had just a thought of showing a young boy falling for an old man and then he wove a story around it. The good thing is at least the film is short.
Strictly ok. Novel concept which wasn't explored completely. (3/10)
Comments
The teacher-student forbidden love stories are quite common and the main line is always the same, so of course I thought this would be just another one like them all - and I'm so happy to be wrong. It touched the main struggle of a teacher's life, but didn't get stuck in it for too long. Since my female parent was a teacher for decades I have grown up in that kind of mental mess. It's basically living under a microscope, being recognized everywhere in public, having shit talked about you the moment a door closes behind you - like being a (not very popular) celebrity or an animal in the zoo. My grandmother used to work as a teacher as well and that's probably where she got her mindset of always looking her best - she matched her outfit and shoes and brushed her hair before going to take out the trash! Seemed idiotic and us younger generations used to laugh at that (with herself laughing as well), but that was her normal and she probably developed that mindset while being a teacher in a village school. Wherever you go as a teacher, there's always a student or a student's parent who could see you and think anything. That affected me as well since I went to the same school where she worked and the pressure of being a teacher's daughter was kinda... alienating. I kept distance with my classmates and all my friends were from other schools, not the one I went to.
In this film Hugh is also worried about his position and keeping his authority since he needs his job. Since his scripts are declined by the publishers, the course he teaches in the university is probably the only thing that keeps him going. It was pleasant to watch how the actor playing Hugh managed to bring out all the insecurities of an expat professor and a playwright going through a writer's block while the film was really short and the main storyline was something else. Since the whole film seemed to be like a dream, his play on stage felt like a dream within a dream.
From the smaller details I loved how polished the dialogue was, so I suspected it had a line director. And indeed it had. "There are no bad teachers, only students who fail at inspiring them." That one line of Hugh captures the hardest part of a teacher's profession - while new students come to the university every year and the subject is new to them, the teacher has to repeat the same program year in and year out - inspiring students are a bare necessity for keeping the teachers at school. It was not stated very clearly, but I'd like to think Mark was one of those inspiring students. I loved his curiosity and perseverance.
Hugh drinking Ballantines made me smile. Because it proved my findings from about the same period when the film was made. Ballantines helps to create textual works - when you need to write something and feel like shit since all you seem to produce are simple sentences, Ballantines seems to unblock the vocabulary and other linguistic features. In very severe cases of writer's block + deadline Ballantines with apple juice makes miracles happen. Like my own diploma paper :D
Now that this film has brought up the topic of school and teachers, I remembered other good and more recent works about teachers and schools - "Merli" and its sequel "Sapere aude", "Rita" (a really good Scandi series about a couldn't-care-less teacher whose youngest son is gay), "HIT" (amazing piece about an unconventional teacher Hugo Ibarra Toledo making a difference in Spain; waiting for S3 to be included in our local TV program). They all have one thing in common - trying to show that teachers are humans, too and they eat and shit and sleep just like the rest of us.