MovieChat Forums > Chun gwong ja sit (1997) Discussion > Question!

Question!

posted 19 years ago by Hey-hey-hey
2 replies | jump to latest

Ok I just have 2 quick questions!

When Ho and Lai are at the race track, they end up winning and Ho goes off to claim the prize money. On his way back he stops for a second next to a man who looks to be in a chef outfit (or something white with an apron). Is this one of the people that Ho owned money to?

Secondly, Lai takes Ho's passport during the film and refuses to give it back. Does he do this just so Ho cannot move anywhere without him and waste more money?

Thanks!

[–] honeymae 19 years ago

at the end of the film, doesn't Lai explain that he kept the passport in part because he wishes that he could be Ho? i can't recall the dialogue in detail, but i remember that thought and being struck by it (i had come to the same conclusion you had) i liked that idea, it made me reflect more on their relationship and i think i understood it a little better.
forgive me if this was a scene that was not in the film but in the documentary in the bonus materials on the dvd. the documentary was very good as well. i found it hard to shake their world out of my head. i wanted to watch the film a 2nd time, but i just didn't have the emotional stamina!

[–] chuck-526 10 years ago

When Ho and Lai are at the race track, they end up winning and Ho goes off to claim the prize money. On his way back he stops for a second next to a man who looks to be in a chef outfit (or something white with an apron). Is this one of the people that Ho owned money to?

I never "got" the exact details, and so in a sense have the same question. (I suspect -but am not sure- the details were never presented, so there wasn't anything to "get".)

My general impression though (at a less detailed level) was that 1) by the time Po got back he didn't have the money, and 2) Fai was so certain that would happen he never even got very excited about winning, "celebrating" merely by buying a cup of coffee from a vendor.

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(BTW, Asian names are often written in what seems to us the reverse order, narrowing the universe down first to a family and then to an individual within that family. So "Ho" and "Lai" are family names. When individual names are a mouthful [as they are here], they're often shortened to the rough equivalent of a nickname: hence "Po" and "Fai" [which in this particular case just happen to be quite similar to their family names].

Occasionally people -especially if they have had and will have very frequent interactions outside Asia- choose to instead write their name in "western" order. For example, the director has made this choice: "Kar-Wai" is his family name, and "Wong" is his individual name.)