Ann Hui has always been a filmmaker of conscience. From Boat People back in 1982 up to last year's The Way We Are, Hui has peppered her commercial work (Visible Secret, Eighteen Springs) with social commentary, be it the plight of immigrants or personal middle-age crises. The Way We Are was a low-key ensemble pseudo-drama - a slice of realistic life from the Tin Shui Wai district that has been painted as Hong Kong's ghetto. That film felt like a response to Lawrence Lau's Besieged City, a film that was as melodramatic as it was sensational and somewhat fear-mongering (live in Tin Shui Wai, meet a hideous end!). Hui's film was a calming force that countered Lau's hysteria, and was one of the year's highlights.

But that doesn't mean Hui is always quite so calm - or subtle. Named after Alain Resnais' Auschwitz documentary, Night and Fog revisits Tin Shui Wai, and this time the media-friendly domestic abuse issue we expect from the so-called City of Sadness is at the heart of the story. We begin with the police investigating what appears to be a standard domestic homicide, where Ling (Zhang Jingchu) and her twin daughters are the victims. During the investigation flashbacks tell the story of Ling's journey from her Mainland home to Hong Kong and an initially happy marriage to Lee Sum (Simon Yam). Things turn ugly after the girls are born and Sum seems more interested in his government welfare checks than in supporting his family. He appears to be threatened by Ling's waitressing job, and that leads to violence.

The subject of Night and Fog is far more in line with the persistent perceptions of what's going on in Tin Shui Wai, and the story is in fact loosely based on a news item from a few years back. Even if there is more than one flash of heavy-handedness, there's more at play here than a simple battered wife drama.

Hui hangs a larger look at contemporary Hong Kong and its evolving relationship with the mainland on an accessible narrative. She isn't interested in policy; her focus is on individual people and the disillusionment that can come with high expectations. Hui paints Hong Kong as a kind of Promised Land where affluence, success and happiness are plentiful but the image is no reflection of the reality. There's a reason the Lees live in Tin Shui Wai and not Mid-Levels. That would validate the myth. Ling makes the trek to Hong Kong with proverbial stars in her eyes and gets stuck in the same rut we assume she left behind, with the addition of the a thug husband - ironically the reason she moved. At a time when more and more mainlanders are moving to Hong Kong, Hui wonders where they fit in, if they can fit in, and what it says about "us" if they can't.

When Ling finally makes a break from her abusive home and asks for help from social services, things don't improve all that much. Institutional apathy and bureaucracy simply create conditions that allow Ling to slip further and further between the cracks. Which is not to say her dire straits are ignored at every turn. At home she has her neighbor, Mrs Au (Amy Chum), who helps as far as her limited resources will allow her. Mrs Au gets her into a shelter where she meets Lily (Jacqueline Law), a veteran of the system. Lily is from Ling's hometown, and the two strike up a friendship that folds into a network of women helping women based at the shelter. There's a nice dynamic between the two, with Lily knowing in her gut Ling is headed for disaster (a tasteful rendering of the fateful night), and Ling enjoying human connection she has yet to find elsewhere in Hong Kong.

As Lee Sum, Simon Yam is in monster territory (he's a fraud, a batterer, and a rapist), making his performance one-dimensional, and writers Cheung King-wai and Alex Law do little in the way of illuminating the character. Few filmmakers have come close to making the abusive husband as understandable as Lee Tamahori did in Once Were Warriors; we are often left wondering what brought Sum to his circumstances. There's a slow downward spiral from the days of wooing Ling on the mainland, but what set that off remains a mystery. He's simply reprehensible.

But it's Ling's story and it is Zhang (Protege, Seven Swords) that makes Night and Fog work on any level. She plays Ling with an honesty and relatability that makes her tragic without being maudlin. Sure, she makes as many wrong decisions as are humanly possible, but Zhang allows us to see where those wrong decisions are coming from. There are (blessedly) no histrionics, and though we know where Ling is going, she doesn't get there. Zhang makes Ling frustratingly real and saves Hui's film in doing so.

Night and Fog opens in Hong Kong May 14th.

(HK Edition 05/09/2009 page8)