The Kong Ngee film company was a major force in modernizing Cantonese cinema from the mid-1950s through the late 1960s and no more so than with urban, middle-class comedies such as How to Get a Wife. Director Chun Kim had already delivered a sensation in the company’s 1960 odd-couple picture, My Intimate Partners, when he embarked on this comic outing, packing every minute with irreverent humor, pop-culture wisecracks, caricature and inspiring melodrama.
Patrick Tse Yin stars as Tse Sing, an office clerk who fancies himself as even better looking than matinee idol Patrick Tse Yin. When he’s not busy typing, he’s lusting after actress Patsy Kar Ling, whose magazine covers he keeps in his desk drawer. Since he doesn’t stand a chance of dating the real Kar Ling, Tse believes that falling for a similar-looking lady would be the perfect compromise. So imagine Tse’s luck when Cheung Wai-ling (Patsy Kar Ling), looking just like the woman of his dreams, turns up at the office and is instructed to work with him. Egged on by his officemate (Ng Tung), dumbstruck Tse plucks up his courage to ask the young woman out.
But there’s a catch: Miss Cheung is actually the mistress of big boss Chow (Keung Chung-ping). And while the young woman is trying to leave a troubled history behind and strike out on her own in the white-collar workforce, her affair with the company head is complicating things. First, Chow’s pregnant wife (Sheung Kwun Kwan-wai) catches on that something’s up, then Tse and Cheung have to pretend that they’re happily married to help clear the boss’s name.
Playing off a setup ripe with situation comedy, Chun stages intricate set pieces culminating in tests of Tse and Cheung’s supposed marital bliss and deploys a well-stocked arsenal of comedy styles. The roster of comic character actors plays true to form, from bumbling uncle Ko Lo-chuen to Ma Siu-ying as his busybody wife. Cantonese cinema archetypes like the seedy boss are delivered in spades. Movie banter becomes a running gag with the lead actors cracking self-referential jokes and other quips about Kong Ngee and its roster of stars, from Kong Suet to Nam Hung to Keung Chung-ping. Reversal of gender roles adds to the fun. Heartthrob Tse is glimpsed as fully domesticated and Kar Ling rises above personal woes in a way then groundbreaking for the Cantonese screen.
Far more than just a comedy director, Chun Kim knew a thing or two about shooting high drama so that when Kar Ling’s character breaks free from the “kept-woman” mold, the audience is happy to take time out from the comedy — if only for a moment — and feel for her even more.
Tim Youngs