Lonely Eighteen movie review: Sisterhood director Tracy Chois showbiz drama has reflections of Ho
2.5/5 stars
A sentimental women-led drama set around the fickle entertainment industry of 1980s and ’90s Hong Kong, Lonely Eighteen charts the contrasting fortunes of a pair of young actresses to sporadically engaging – if ultimately inconsequential – effect.
Notably, the film is based partly on the real-life experiences of producer and co-star Irene Wan Pik-ha, who grew up impoverished in a refugee village in Tiu Keng Leng in Kowloon before making her acting debut in the 1982 film Lonely Fifteen at age 16.Wan has since had an uneven career that, at one pivotal moment, saw her take a brave but arguably misguided decision to fully undress for a crime mystery – Herman Yau Lai-to’s All of a Sudden (1996). While undoubtedly famous, the actress has never managed to achieve proper stardom.
All these details are recounted in Lonely Eighteen, which sees childhood friends Elaine (Angel Lam Chin-ting) and Ying (Renci Yeung Sz-wing, The First Girl I Loved) begin their career with a rude awakening on their first film shoot – cue a sleazy producer forcing the latter to strip naked for the cameras.Ying continues to suffer through the years with both her parasitic boyfriend (Kyle Li Yam-san) and her own status as an erotic-film actress, while Elaine – Wan’s stand-in for this dramatisation – struggles to win over her strict father (Ti Lung, credited as Tommy Tam), a war veteran who cannot let go of the past.
The problem with Lonely Eighteen’s screenplay – co-written by Sunny Chan Wing-sun (Table for Six), Emily Chan Nga-lei (Madalena) and Echo Chow Yui-kei – is that it cannot quite decide if it wishes to be a star biopic, a celebration of friendship or an exposé of the darker side of show business.While ostensibly sincere in its re-enactment of Wan’s career and family life, the film is narratively distracted and never reaches the emotional catharsis that its present-day scenes – starring Wan as Elaine and former erotic film actress Loletta Lee Lai-chun as Ying – are meant to inspire.Macau director Tracy Choi Ian-sin has proved her aptitude for crafting a wistful, women-oriented melodrama with her memorable feature debut Sisterhood (2016), whose two lead actresses, Fish Liew Ziyu and Jennifer Yu Heung-ying, both appear in supporting roles in Lonely Eighteen.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most intriguing scenes in Choi’s second feature inevitably revolve around the conflicted bond between Elaine and Ying, with Elaine’s brief but poignant interactions with her father coming as a close second. Elsewhere, the scenes about their acting careers are clichéd and even a little dull.
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