She Remembers, He Forgets (2015) the latest film directed by Adam Wong after the release of the first film The Way We Dance in 2013，is a localised Hong Kong movies about love, friendships, nostalgia and dreams, aimed to bring self-reflexive to Hong Kong audiences.

The film can be divided into two timelines. One in 1992 and another in 2015. In 1992, the main character Gigi (acted by Cecilia So), So Pok-man and Pang Shing-wah were really close friends studying in the same secondary school. In 2015, Gigi (acted by Miriam Yeung) becomes a travel agent and is married to Pang Shing-wah (acted by Lam Hoi-fung), while So Pok-man is disappeared.

The story begins in 2015, Gigi and Pang Shing-wah are both focusing on their career, Gigi hasn’t get a holiday for 5 years and Pang spends most of his time in the office. They have no time to communicate, life keeps dull and boring, and the most crucial, they have forgotten their dreams. Until they attended the secondary school ‘s classmates gathering, they taled about the good old times, one of them mentioned So Pok-man, it stimulate Gigi’s desire to recall the memories and find out where So is.

The scene then switch back to 1992, So Pok-man and they were S.6 students who are going to graduate from secondary school. Their teacher told them to fill in a “dream proposal”, to think of their future. Most of the students want to pursue their dream, like to be dancer, footballer, film director, etc. However, in the year of 1992, the deadline of British colony is coming. As people would like to search for stable identity, they considered immigration. In the film, Adam Wong use Gigi to represent the struggle of Hong Kongers that time, as she needed to choose between So who prefer moving to the UK and Pang who would stay.

One of the objectives of the film is to bring the nostalgia of the good old time around 1992, therefore there are many details are showing collective memories of Hong Kong peoples. For example, Dragon Ball, Kai Tak airport, host of children’s programme Helen Tam Yuk Ying, The Greed of Man, Lion Hill, etc.

It is common for film director to project their own experiences in their film. This phenomenon is called the auteur theory by Hayward. Adam was born in 1975, he is exactly a secondary student in 1992, he has experienced that period of time. He said he has strong resonance with the film as it reflects his own experience. In addition, he said the backpack of Pang Shing-wah is designed according to the backpack of his best friends in secondary school.

However, the main target of the film is the self-reflexive part. Adam Wong feels that nowadays, Hong Kong people had got lost in the society. Work 9am to 5pm every day like a robot. In the film Gigi and Pang are exactly representing these people, work every day, with no time to communicate, and most crucial, they are not happy. Adam would like to raise Hong Kong people’s memories, he believes every person would have their own dream, however, living in this society, we gradually forget our dream. He hopes this movie can help those people to self-reflexive, get back their memories, to recall their dreams. Once you have your dreams back, you would then be happy. Let’s ge

t your dream back!

Reference

Hayward, Susan. Key concepts in cinema studies. Routledge, 1996.

Lee, V. P. Y.. Hong Kong cinema since 1997: The post-nostalgic imagination. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

"黃修平：人始終要有理想." Hket. N.p., 12 Nov. 2015. Web. 13 Apr. 2016.

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Henry Lee Tsun Fung

10549115/21619788

Asian Studies Year 3