Queering the Cinematic Border of the PRC and Hong Kong

Abstract

<p>What would it mean to unsettle the notion of Chineseness from the vantage point of Sinophone Hong Kong cinema? This article examines Fruit Chan’s three films on the figure of the sex worker in his ‘prostitute trilogy’, namely <em>Durian Durian</em> (2000), <em>Hollywood Hong Kong</em> (2001), and <em>Three Husbands</em> (2018). While <em>Durian Durian</em> portrays the friendship between Yan the sex worker and Fan the illegal immigrant girl in Hong Kong, the portrayal of Yan’s more peaceful life back home in Northeast China also subverts the stereotypical idea that Hong Kong is a more desirable city of social mobility for young Chinese women. <em>Hollywood Hong Kong</em> further queers the border of the PRC and Hong Kong through the global border-crossing travels of Hung Hung the sex worker. Finally, <em>Three Husbands</em> most daringly symbolizes the geopolitical tension within Hong Kong by showing how the female protagonist Ah Mui negotiates the power dynamic between her first, second, and third husbands, thus subtly queering the triangular relationality across British colonial legacy, Chinese nationalism, and Hong Kong Sinophone localism. Overall, Chan’s cinematic aesthetic implicates the limit of what can be shown and challenges the shifting boundary of Chinese cinema through the Sinophone analytic of queering borders.<br></p>