Crossing Borders: Interview with Carina Lau, Chen Kun, and Flora Lau of Bends
Flora Lau’s debut film Bends, which connects the stories of a recently-abandoned Hong Kong housewife and her mainland Chinese chauffeur, was screened as part of the Un Certain Regard sidebar at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
by Ada Tseng
Two individuals, with quiet desperation stemming from problems on opposite sides of the financial spectrum, share close corners in this story about a wealthy Hong Kong housewife and her mainland Chinese chauffeur. The impeccably dressed Carina Lau plays Anna Li, the isolated wife of a wealthy businessman who has recently disappeared, leaving her with nothing but bills she cannot afford and judgmental socialite acquaintances she cannot ask for help. Meanwhile, her driver Fei, played by Chen Kun, has a family of his own on the other side of the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border: a young daughter and pregnant wife that is currently in hiding while they figure out how to dodge China’s one-child policy penalty and find a rare Hong Kong hospital that’s willing to deliver a non-citizen’s baby.
“I wanted to capture what the Hong Kong environment is like now,” says director Flora Lau, of her first feature Bends(過界). “It’s a city that changes a lot, so on one hand, people could see Hong Kong as a place of deterioration, and on the other hand, it represents hope. I wanted to bring different perspectives together.”
Ada Tseng 