A young woman finds her voice in a world dominated by very loud men Angie Chen’s period drama.
I’ve said before that film remakes should not be of popular, good movies, but of generally bad, problematic or outdated ones. Seeing something with potential actually get the treatment it deserved is far more satisfying than any nth Batman reboot. To say that The World of Suzie Wong– a 1960s jingoistic, orientalist tale of a British sailor falling in love with a Hong Konger- deserved better is incorrect. Rather, it’s fair to say that the people represented in it did. The women, the Hong Kongers, who were treated as secondary in a film all about them. Enter My Name Ain’t Suzie, which, while not being a retelling or remake keeps many of the themes and beats from its predecessor, looks to tell this Miss Saigon-esque story from another point of view – that of the women that are so casually discarded and treated so passively.
The film follows the life of Shui-Mei (Patricia Ha) who comes from a small fishing village in mid-century Hong Kong. She, and her cousin (Deanie Ip), are selected to work in a Wan Chai nightclub, like so many girls before them. She adjusts to life there, drinking with giving companionship to the many British sailors who come to town. Meanwhile, Jimmy (Anthony Wong) is a young mixed-race man who is looking for his British father. He and Shui-mei fall for each other, but life has other plans.
Told over the span of many years, My Name Ain’t Suzie tackles a lot of pretty serious topics, almost all of them to do with the way that women were treated in postwar Asia. Director Angie Chen gives her female characters agency in their own lives, away from the grasp of white saviourism and exotic melodrama. The film’s differences between itself and The World of Suzie Wong could warrant an entire essay, but the strongest difference is – of course – from its different point of view.
And though Shui-mei is given more say in her life, things aren’t always good. In fact, as reality starkly reminds us, life was often bleak. Prostitution was one of the few ways a woman could have financial autonomy, but it often came at great personal risk from clients, gangsters and local officials all trying to make life worse. Through sisterly camaraderie and an unshaking resolve, Shui-mei and her girls are able to carve out their own destiny, flawed and dangerous as it might be.
On top of being entirely from a female perspective, the story also focuses very heavily on an underrepresented side of Wan Chai in the mid 20th century: the high amount of Eurasian kids left abandoned by their fathers, who had all returned to England the US. Wong didn’t really even need to act, as his own experiences mirrored Jimmy’s. In this, it only serves to add to the hurt and chaos brought by the sailors to Hong Kong.
All of this gives My Name Ain’t Suzie so much more credibility as a landmark instalment of Hong Kong’s New Wave, simply from how grounded it is in the way it tells its tragic story. It bucks cliches from those old Hollywood films, though, to be fair, it does employ several of its own as it carves its melodramatic path.
My Name Ain’t Suzie has its issues, of course, but they’re minor storytelling gripes that are largely overshadowed by how it achieves what it sets out to do. It wants to set the record straight, and scrub history of stories that told of far off exotic lands and even more exotic (and easy) women. Instead, it tells a story that feels far more real, while managing to keep the central themes of love, hardship and heartbreak intact. And makes you wonder why there wasn’t more of this. I would love to see a Thai King and I.
Verdict: A much-needed response to a dated, problematic genre, My Name Ain’t Suzie is both a perfect retelling and a gripping drama, wrapped with realistic characters and even more realistic heartbreak.
You can catch this film at the Hong Kong Film Festival
My Name Ain’t Suzie (1985)
Cantonese
Director: Angie Chen
CAST
Patricia Ha – Shui-Mei
Anthony Wong – Jimmy
Deannie Ip – Wong Ying
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