Dream Home (18.)
Directed by Pang Ho-Cheung.
Starring Josie Ho, Eason Chan, Derek Tsang, Lawrence Chou, Juno Mak, Michelle Ye. Cantonese with subtitles. 96 mins Out on blu-ray, DVD from network.
A tale of the extremities of big cities set in the most extreme of big cities, Hong Kong. We may complain about the absurd property prices and pressures of living in London but in that tiny patch of land clinging to some scraps of shoreline, space is at such a premium that the effect is magnified to an absurd level.
The response of this film is the innovation of property torture porn. It has a strange two track narrative. In one we see a girl Cheng Lai Sheung (Josie Ho) who since childhood has become slowly obsessed with owning a flat with a sea view and has worked relentlessly toward saving enough for a deposit. The other is an absurdly gruesome night in which she sneaks into the apartment block of her dreams and starts dispatching residents in the most extreme ways possible as part of a scheme that it revealed at the end.
The two strands tug in opposing directions. The life story is a compelling look at the alienating effects of living in a wholly materialistic society. It is an expert piece of film making and there is a terrific central performance from Josie Ho, who looks oddly similar to Juliette Binoche.
But the violence is just too repellent, so relentless and slavering they will limit the film’s appeal to jaded youth and older men who dress like members of a society that performs The Matrix re-enactments at the weekends.
I understand that its bloody excesses are intended as black comedy and by the end I could take them as such. But an earlier scene where - look away now if you have a soul - a pregnant woman is smashed to the floor, a plastic bag rammed over her head and then a vacuum cleaner attached to suck out the air and speed the suffocation, was just something that I just couldn’t park my truck next to.
It is best seen as a cinematic equivalent of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, where the inhuman gory extremities satirically equated with the dehumanising extremities of materialism. It was a book I could only get through by skimming the violent bits and eventually in Dream House I resorted to the Fwd button for the nasty bits. It was definitely a blessing this on a disc.
Directed by Pang Ho-Cheung.
Starring Josie Ho, Eason Chan, Derek Tsang, Lawrence Chou, Juno Mak, Michelle Ye. Cantonese with subtitles. 96 mins Out on blu-ray, DVD from network.
A tale of the extremities of big cities set in the most extreme of big cities, Hong Kong. We may complain about the absurd property prices and pressures of living in London but in that tiny patch of land clinging to some scraps of shoreline, space is at such a premium that the effect is magnified to an absurd level.
The response of this film is the innovation of property torture porn. It has a strange two track narrative. In one we see a girl Cheng Lai Sheung (Josie Ho) who since childhood has become slowly obsessed with owning a flat with a sea view and has worked relentlessly toward saving enough for a deposit. The other is an absurdly gruesome night in which she sneaks into the apartment block of her dreams and starts dispatching residents in the most extreme ways possible as part of a scheme that it revealed at the end.
The two strands tug in opposing directions. The life story is a compelling look at the alienating effects of living in a wholly materialistic society. It is an expert piece of film making and there is a terrific central performance from Josie Ho, who looks oddly similar to Juliette Binoche.
But the violence is just too repellent, so relentless and slavering they will limit the film’s appeal to jaded youth and older men who dress like members of a society that performs The Matrix re-enactments at the weekends.
I understand that its bloody excesses are intended as black comedy and by the end I could take them as such. But an earlier scene where - look away now if you have a soul - a pregnant woman is smashed to the floor, a plastic bag rammed over her head and then a vacuum cleaner attached to suck out the air and speed the suffocation, was just something that I just couldn’t park my truck next to.
It is best seen as a cinematic equivalent of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, where the inhuman gory extremities satirically equated with the dehumanising extremities of materialism. It was a book I could only get through by skimming the violent bits and eventually in Dream House I resorted to the Fwd button for the nasty bits. It was definitely a blessing this on a disc.
