Fridae

In I Love Hong Kong, director Eric Tsang takes The House of 72 Tenants and strips it down to a good-natured, inoffensive comedy about the value of neighbours and gracious living in public housing (i.e. HDB flats or “the projects”). Here, Tony Leung plays a character who reluctantly returns, post financial crisis, to his childhood home in an ageing public project and rediscovers the wholesome goodness of proletariat housing.

Like most Chinese New Year flicks, the details of the plot is almost inconsequential – almost every actor in the Shaw/Golden Harvest/TVB stable has a role (however small or fleeting) to play in the string of comedy gags that make up this picture. All that matters is that you’ll feel warm and fuzzy from all that display of good-natured neighbourliness and the very neat way the plot will resolve itself by the end of its running time.

Why should a new year flick warrant your attention? Like After This Our Exile, I Love Hong Kong is another film that Mediacorp, Jack Neo, and some Malaysian talents should be capable of writing and producing – but did not. To local audiences, this Chinese New Year comedy from Hong Kong sells so convincingly and effortlessly a concept that our Singapore’s leaders struggle to peddle – the myth and ideal of the HDB block as a vertical village, brimming with wholesome cheek-to-jowl neighbourliness and gotong royong.

I’m tired of local films and television dramas portraying the HDB as the nexus of anomie, spiritual dislocation, and urban angst. Seeing these, who would want to love Singapore? This film, while showing none of the (touristy) sights and sounds of Hong Kong, is made with love for its humble, ageing, crowded public projects – so much so that you feel Hong Kong is a place that can be loved.