Vulgaria

Viewers heading in to catch Pang Ho-cheung’s new comedy opus Vulgaria should take the film’s title as fair warning: loaded with foul language, ultra-crude gags and constant references to the sleazier side of Hong Kong cinema, vulgarity is very much on the agenda in this essential quickie. At the story’s centre is To Wai-cheung (Chapman To), a maker of unashamedly trashy cinema who’s been running low on work. Stuck in production limbo, To attends a Q-and-A session with film students, giving them a frank rundown on the difficulties low-end filmmakers face in finding investors, dealing with nuts and bolts like product placement, and, juiciest of all, coping with shocking sacrifice in the quest for opening night applause.
As the session gets more and more risqué, the students and their professor (Lawrence Cheng) get introduced to a colourful list of characters surrounding To’s latest, and spectacularly troubled, production. There’s the dazzlingly deviant mainland triad Tyrannosaurus (Ronald Cheng), who holds the cash to get To a new film project. Then there’s the 1970s sex bomb Susan Shaw (playing herself), whom Tyrannosaurus wants onscreen for a remake of her 1976 skin flick Confession of a Courtesan (a.k.a. I Want More). A younger starlet, Tsui Ka-yan (Dada Chan), is meanwhile learning all about the usefulness of oral skills in the film biz and making quite an impression. And then there’s To’s daughter Jacqueline (Jacqueline Chan), who’s caught in the middle as To’s ex-wife (Crystal Tin) frowns on his career.
Audiences into anything-goes Cantonese comedy will be well served with Vulgaria, but so too should be moviegoers up for a Hong Kong love letter to cinema. Shot in a lively, free-form style, complete with a personable lead character given to addressing the audience directly, Vulgaria dispenses advice on etiquette at the movies, explores the true nature of producing work, recalls glory days of theatres filled with sex-film buffs, and highlights dedication even in the making of fun genre trash.
As if that weren’t enough, Pang works in plenty more. The flood of verbal obscenity was devised to capture contemporary Cantonese slang in a silver-screen snapshot (a specifically local appeal, it must be said). Co-productions with mainland China and the drop in new local films have reduced the presence of the local tongue in Hong Kong cinema, and Vulgaria’s abundance of profane and politically incorrect phrases make up for that handily. Cultural misunderstandings between Hongkongers and mainlanders are meanwhile sent up in the smutty interplay between Tyrannosaurus and To, and with To’s Hong Kong pal Lui Wing-shing (Simon Loui) proving not so hot as a middleman. Random diversions on sex, gambling and office strife are threaded in. And the story involving To’s family life touches on pressure-cooker schooling and the low regard local parents have for their offspring going into the arts.
Not yet released in Hong Kong, Vulgaria is clearly a cheap production, the product of a hectic 12-day shoot replete with some scenes being written the day they were shot. But don’t take that as a sign of poor quality. The screenplay, by Pang, Luk Yee-sum and satirist Lam Chiu-wing, nimbly jumps between To’s filmmaking saga and his personal troubles and never loses its footing. Hilarious situations spin out at every turn, sometimes followed with little time for audiences to compose themselves before the next zinger hits. Chapman To plays the filmmaker in focus with a pitch-perfect performance amid a terrific roster of side players. Top comic honours, however, go to Ronald Cheng for his outrageous portrayal of the mainland gangster, whose bizarre tastes in food and sex fuel some of the biggest laughs. With the recent Love in the Buff reaffirming that Pang can deliver the goods for top-class commercial cinema, Vulgaria makes it clear he’s just as skilled concocting grand mischief in the B-grade arena as well.