South China Morning Post Review: Lawrence Lau’s Queen of Temple Street (1990)1 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIt is rare for an old film to seem like a recently made work set in a past era, but such is the case with Queen of Temple Street.
The dated hairstyles and gigantic cellphones mark it as 1990, but the milieu and relationships are so sharply etched that there is a timeless quality to what is possibly Hong Kong’s saltiest mother-daughter tale.
The pungency comes from the prostitutes who ply their trade in the small brothels lining the titular avenue. This is the world presided over by Hua (Sylvia Chang Ai-chia), the empress of a small domain just one flight up.
The crux of Chan Man-keung’s award-winning script is the contentious bond between Hua and estranged daughter Yan (Rain Lau Yuk-tsui), a teen drop-out defiantly following in her mum’s footsteps. The narrative’s psychological depth is enhanced by subtle directorial touches like the utilisation of the columns outside the nearby Yau Ma Tei Police Station as a framing device to isolate Hua from her antagonistic offspring.
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