Johnnie To's Don T Go Breaking My Heart

Entering Hong Kong felt mechanical, as most travel does- this time is so drenched in systematic motions that there’s not a moment to register the change in atmosphere. Leaving the airport, taking the train over the ocean onto the island, seeing rows of apartment buildings as concrete beauties, before they dissolve into the glass towers of the island: these are the moments that jar, that you realise the space you are in. But I realised we were trapped. Situated, from the train to the bus, with no grasp over the city, just the window and the outside world that dwarfed us. What I felt in this moment were the images I had seen in film (I’m not sure how proud of this I should be); I thought of Johnnie To’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart 2. To takes …show more content…
To get in the touristy bits, to take the ferry, to see a thousand buddhas, to cope with the weather- it was exciting and exhausting. There was a part of me that couldn’t wait to get to the films. I wanted to experience the Hong Kong cinema scene, to see how audiences responded, to feel the atmosphere and compare that to what I was judging on screen. The festival framework provided a layer of examination on top of that. I was in a screening of Jaqcues Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse, when I was first struck with what I admire most about audiences of the Hong Kong International Film Festival. They were earnest. This could be considered true of Hong Kong audiences in general, but my involvement with them was limited (I don’t think festival audiences were exclusive or “special”, perhaps the setting brings something out in participation). Here, their engagement was forward, direct, attentive. A small cinema with uncomfortable seats weathering a four hour film without intermission. They laughed and sighed, and felt attune with the effortless expression Rivette was creating. There was no moment of thought that this could have been an arduous