The wildly diverse filmography of Herman Yau gets a boost in its social-issues department with Sara, a tough and ambitious border-hopping drama that includes a prostitution theme. The title character is Sara Ho Yuk-ling (Charlene Choi), who viewers first see being raped as a child by her stepdad in 1999. Within a year, she leaves home and her sex worker mother behind, then takes up life on the street and starts a run of dodgy jobs.
Two stories soon unfold in parallel as the film leaps into heavy cross-cutting. In one, Sara’s life takes major turn when she encounters a man, Kam Ho-yin (Simon Yam), fishing at the harbour. The next time they meet, he returns a diary she’d left behind and offers to pull strings for her to enter a top school. Kam, it turns out, is a senior education official, and Sara offers sexual favours in return for his help. As the relationship becomes one of sugar daddy and young mistress, Kam supports Sara through university and she in turn starts to feel affection for him.
The other story sees Sara, having graduated and become a journalist, heading to Thailand after a sensational report of hers is spiked. While away, she starts research on the sex trade and meets call girl Dok-my (Sunadcha Tadrabiab), initially paying her to speak on life and work before trying to free her from her pimp’s control.
Moviegoers familiar with Herman Yau’s social dramas may approach Sara as part of a specific line of films, which earlier featured the sex worker movie Whispers and Moans in 2007 and its follow-up True Women for Sale in 2008. The theme most clearly expands as Dok-my’s story emerges, and also in Sara granting sex to get through studies. In the Thailand side, Yau and writer Erica Li find plenty of scope to explore the sex trade (and for good measure up the tension with devices like a chase scene), though later moments with Dok-my falter when a sudden pickup in vocabulary seems out of step with earlier scenes.
Social comment meanwhile extends further in Hong Kong, as Yau and Li pepper local scenes with all sorts of issues. Collusion between the government and real-estate interests is hinted at, destruction of heritage buildings is referenced and, in the role of Kam Ho-yin, abuse of power and questionable morality show up in the role of an official who’s a churchgoing family man. Media freedom also gets a run when Sara’s magazine cans a report in fear of losing advertisers, and in talk of an attack on a journalist. Seen against mainstream films that go easy on political and social topics, or simply avoid them, the approach refreshes by giving voice to Hong Kong concerns.
The big local talking point on Sara’s release, however, was the performance of Charlene Choi. In a big-screen career spanning close to 15 years, the actress has been best known for clean, pop roles. As Sara, Choi shakes things up with a far more rough and daring role incorporating sex, foul language and a large range of ages and dramatic turns. Co-star Simon Yam likewise tackles great transformations in his character, in terms of public and private personas and as Kam Ho-yin gets older.
Sara proved a strong performer at the box office on its Hong Kong release this March, with the film surpassing the takings of several works in 2014’s local-film top 10. Those seeking reasons for optimism in Hong Kong cinema may find encouragement in Sara’s success: Yau’s latest shows that filmmakers shooting smaller, bolder and thought-provoking pictures can still be rewarded in their home market.