Life is Cheap... But Toilet Paper is Expensive / Chinese Box

Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive series Directed by Wayne Wang. Register at cinema.ucla.edu to attend this in-theater screening.

Restored director’s cut

In person: Wayne Wang & pop culture writer John Powers

A man is hired to deliver a briefcase from America to Hong Kong in this loose, Hong Kong-set version of Chan is Missing. With late-1980s street photography of open air markets and an impressionistic sense of narrative, Life is Cheap… is Wang’s most experimental work to date, blending the formalist sensibilities of the nouvelle vague with documentary-like moments and direct-camera addresses. The film received an X-rating from the MPAA, prompting the film’s distributor to release it without an official rating.

(1989, dir. Wayne Wang, DCP, color, English, Mandarin, and Cantonese with English subtitles, 85 min.)

Chinese Box chronicles an ailing British journalist’s pursuit of truth and love in Hong Kong in the months leading up to the end of British rule. John (Jeremy Irons) spends his time navigating between cocktail parties and the city streets, where, armed with his video camera, he attempts to record an “authentic” Hong Kong. There he encounters Jean (Maggie Cheung), a scrappy street hustler with a story.

(1997, dir. Wayne Wang, DCP, color, English and Cantonese with English subtitles, 87 min.)