Tape
A Hong Kong remake of Richard Linklater’s camcorder drama still feels relevant in the #MeToo era.
Image courtesy of Showalker.
Film remakes are by no means rare but this is an unusual example in more ways than one. The incentive to bring out a new treatment is usually built on the hope of repeating the success of a film that did well originally. Tape, however, is based on the film of the same title which was made by Richard Linklater in 2001 and it met with divisive reviews which led to it having limited success at the box office. It's also uncommon to find the original filmmaker personally involved in a remake, but in this case Linklater himself is an executive producer. Yet another feature of the new Tape to be noted is that, although it closely follows the original (the 2001 film is fully acknowledged in the credits as being the basis for this one), the story which was formerly set in Michigan now takes place in Hong Kong and the film is played in Cantonese with subtitles.
Those who have seen Linklater’s film will inevitably make comparisons so I should mention here that I missed seeing it and was accordingly able to view Bizhan Tong’s film in total ignorance of how the tale would develop. Despite now existing in two film versions, Tape was in the first instance a stage play by Stephen Belber who had the screenplay credit on the first film version and now shares the writing credit here. Part of the reason for Linklater’s Tape being put down by many critics was the fact that it was all too obviously a theatre piece. Any play adapted for the screen runs the risk of not being cinematic enough to hide its roots and concealing them is all the more difficult when the stage work in question is, like this one, a three-hander that plays out on a single set. Tong makes a minor adjustment to that by opting for a prologue and an epilogue in which we see the three main characters as they were about fifteen years earlier when they were graduating from high school. However, everything else takes place in the course of one evening when Jon (Kenny Kwan) calls on his old friend Wing (Adam Pak).
After the prologue the first half of Tape becomes a two-hander and that inevitably that makes it a film in which the dialogue plays a key role. But, if that kind of drama is more naturally at home on the stage, Tong adroitly downplays its theatrical feel by keeping his editor Mitchell Tolliday on his toes, that is to say he makes a point of frequently varying camera angles in order to sustain the visual interest. He ensures too that both Kwan and Pak avoid stagy gestures and give convincingly naturalistic performances. Since we believe in both Jon, a filmmaker who is in Hong Kong because he has a feature playing in the Hong Kong Asian film festival, and in Wing, who is no more than a lifeguard in Phucket and has become a junkie and a dealer, we readily engage in speculating on the character and motivations of each of them.
This makes the first half of Tape richly rewarding. On the surface, Jon is the epitome of a man of integrity and respectability who has attained success. He speaks of being married and having two kids which is in total contrast to Wing’s lack of stability and his existence as a man who gets stoned regularly. Even so it could be that Wing’s nonconformity has an attraction for Jon that he does not want to admit and we can tell from their conversation that in talking of the art of cinema Jon is trying to give the impression that his filmmaking has real value when we get the impression that in reality his movie is undistinguished.
But, if we are getting impressions of what these two men are like in their early thirties, much of their talk centres on the time glimpsed in the camcorder images of the prologue. On the night of their graduation Jon had bedded a fellow student, Amy. She had previously gone out with Wing who was in love with her but who had not had sex with her. All these years later Wing remains resentful of that and as their talk continues it becomes clear that Wing is building up step by step the implication that the couple’s one-night stand had amounted to Amy being raped by Jon. His plan is to get Jon to confess to this and a tape is involved in the process (thus the film’s title) but, while this is dramatically gripping in itself, the real fascination lies in the viewer being encouraged to consider just where the truth lies and what the men will admit to about their present motivations and their past feelings.
It is indicated that Amy is living nearby in Hong Kong and Wing eventually insists on inviting her round which might or might not lead to Jon apologising to her. The second half of Tape becomes a three-hander with the arrival of Amy (Selena Lee) who, once she recognises what is going on, chooses to express her own view of what happened all those years ago. In so far as Tape becomes a work about how over time recollections of a past event can differ drastically on the part of those involved one finds that this film carries distinct echoes of Kurosawa’s classic Rashomon. That all this is expressed here mainly through the dialogue makes Tape less cinematic than Rashomon. But what for me eventually weakens it is the fact that, in contrast to the convincing psychology of the two men portrayed earlier, the twists and turns of the film’s second half start to suggest the contrived elaborations of a writer seeking to surprise. If Kwan and Pak convince more than Selena Lee it is no fault of the actress but down to a certain loss of credibility. Some, of course, may be able to take a more positive view of the second half and, although this version is about twenty-five minutes longer than the original, the new Tape does sustain its length. One notes too the adroit casting when we see Jon (Mason Fung), Wing (Angus Yeung) and Amy (Summer Chin) as youngsters. Furthermore, it is to Tong’s credit that the remake was made with the intention of being impactful on today's audiences in his part of the world where the issues at the heart of the #MeToo Movement have made less impression than they have elsewhere. If not a total success, Tong’s Tape is far from being a failure.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Kenny Kwan, Selena Lee, Adam Pak, Mason Fung, Angus Yeung, Summer Chin.
Dir Bizhan Tong, Pro Bizhan Tong and Selena Lee, Screenplay Stephen Belber, Bizhan Tong, Selena Lee and Bonnie Lo, Ph Colleen Kwok, Pro Des Sarona Lee, Ed Mitchell Tolliday, Music Kenton Henson and Philip Edwin Osborne, Costumes Lui King Chun.
Phoenix Waters Productions/Salon Films Japan/Phoenix Waters Asia-Showalker.
110 mins. Hong Kong/UK. 2024. UK Rel: 19 September 2025. Cert. 15.
