Riley Ip Kam-hung joined the Hong Kong film industry as
a production assistant at the Shaw Brothers film studio
before making his screenwriting debut in 1983 with
Shaolin Intruders. He went on to work as an associate
producer on various movies, before collaborating with
Stanley Kwan, as assistant director, on Centre Stage
(1982). In 1997 he joined United Filmmakers
Organization and made his directorial debut with Love Is
Not A Game, But A Joke. Ip has since directed three
more films: Metade Fumaca (1999), Lavender (2000)
and Just One Look (2002).
Just One Look appeals to both teen and adult audiences.
Was this your intention?
I didn’t really consider this. Just One Look is my own
story. I’ve actually wanted to film it for since I started
working in this industry. Normally, everybody on the
creative side will want to film something about themselves.
I really wanted to film a story about when I was
young. My family used to sell fishballs outside a cinema.
So when I was young I was always around the cinema.
The cinema that I hung around was in Sheung Shui. At
that time I didn’t know I’d be in the industry. So when I
became a director I really wanted to have a movie
talking about my growing up with cinema. But no-one
would let me film it. It wasn’t commercial enough. So
when I did finally get to film it, I didn’t think about
whether it was suitable for teenagers or old people. It
was just about me growing up.
Why did you put the young stars on the poster? It’s not
really an idol film.
The poster used Twins [Charlene Choi and Gillian
Chung], and Shawn Yue and Wong You-nam, who are
new actors. I don’t think Yue and Wong were idols,
because it was Yu’s first movie and he was not popular
at the time. The Twins are idols, it’s true. But I hope the
audience won’t watch it as an idol movie. I hope they
watch a story about a kid growing up. If audiences want
to see a movie about Twins, I’m afraid they might be
disappointed because in the movie they are not the
main actors. If you see the movie, you’ll see it’s actually
the story of a boy, played by Shawn Yue. Those two girls
only appear in a small part of the film.
Nostalgia was an important trend in Hong Kong last
year. Were you trying to follow this?
I made the movie because I was able to. Last year the
nostalgic atmosphere was quite strong here. But I didn’t
have anything to do with the nostalgia trend. I shot it
because I had the chance to do it. But nostalgia might
have helped with getting the money from the investors. I
think that atmosphere affected them more than me.
Maybe they thought that Just One Look was that type of
movie.
How much of Just One Look is based on your own past?
Eighty per cent is based on my past, but some things
may not have actually happened to me. They happened
to my friends, or I heard the stories about neighbours
and people around me. I grouped all the stories, including
my own memories, together.
Is it difficult to film a story set in old Hong Kong?
It’s difficult. Originally, the story didn’t happen in Cheung
Chau but in a small village in the New Territories called
Sheung Shui, where I grew up. I went there and thought
of filming in Sheung Shui but the cinema is gone. It’s
been replaced by a tall building. And around it there
were lots of modern buildings and modern advertising
billboards. So I couldn’t film it to look like a Seventies
scene. I looked around and I found Cheung Chau.
Although Cheung Chau is an island and the story is
totally unrelated to an island, the lifestyle of Cheung Chau is basically the same as in the small village of
Shek Wu Hui in Sheung Shui. The difference is that they
have a fishing industry. Cheung Chau is poor and there
was a cinema, which let the village people have many
dreams. So the whole story was moved to Cheung Chau
to avoid the modern scenes in the city.
How did you create the cinema for the film?
The cinema we found [on Cheung Chau] had actually
been shut down. We kept the outside structure, but it’s
derelict inside. We renewed the outside according to the
original. For the inside we used a cinema in Fanling
because it was too derelict inside. That way we didn’t
have to rebuild a whole cinema.
The cinema is the centre of the community in Just One
Look. Why did you present it that way?
Because it reflects how it was when I was a child. When I
was a child I lived in Sheung Shui and it had one cinema.
In the Seventies, Sheung Shui was very old fashioned.
I can remember that I never went to Kowloon.
Going to Kowloon at that time was a big event because
you needed to take a train. So Sheung Shui was a really
small village and the cinema standing there had a very
important effect. For every child, the only way they
could look outside was through the cinema. Inside the
cinema you could see foreign and Hong Kong movies,
including kung fu, wuxia and period films. The impact
was so big. I think it is very similar to Cinema Paradiso,
which also talks about a small town with a cinema. The
story is different but the spirit is very close. When I was
a child I was affected by movies. Especially when my
family were hawkers outside the cinema. So I’m close to
the movies. I mean close in the sense that there are
many movies I watched many times, but at that time I
didn’t know what the movies were. I couldn’t imagine
that one day I would participate in the industry.
In the movie, the main actors copy letters from film
synopses. Did that happen?
Actually, I kept a lot of those cinema synopses. In the
cinema, they painted the billboards upstairs and they
had lots of these there, and I loved to keep them. In the
Seventies, love letters were quite popular so we often
copied from them. We borrowed words written in the
synopses when we were writing to our girlfriends. This is
a true story.
What has been your experience working with young
actors?
In Metade Fumaca it was Nicholas Tse, and this time it
was Shawn Yue and the others. It’s interesting is to
teach them how to act, but I find that young actors don’t
accept this. As a director it’s hard to teach them to act.
You can only try to make use of their real characteristics.
They have limited experience, so they won’t use
so-called method acting. Very experienced actors know
how to use method acting, but young people have to be
told what to do. The most interesting and most difficult
thing is choosing actors. Take Wong You-nam’s as
Fishball Ming, for example. Because you’re using a
young actor, you should use one similar to the character.
It’s different from filming adults. I can choose Andy
Lau or someone else to be a bad or good guy. They can
act both roles because they are experienced. They know
how to act. But those young actors are difficult. You
would rather choose one who is like Fishball Ming than
get someone to act like that. Shawn Yue actually has
Fan’s character. Nicholas Tse is just like Smokey in
Metade Fumaca. Their own characteristics are close to
the characters. That way I find it easier get what I want
from them.
Tim Youngs