As someone who's somewhat familiar with Denise Ho's story as well as the political situation in HK/China, I think this documentary is both appreciated and somewhat disappointing.
While I side with HK's fight for freedom and respects Ho's perseverance, I think it's still important to acknowledge the complexity of the political situation in HK and China. The film took the easy way out by playing the soundbites. It's easy to paint everything with a "China evil" brush, but it is quite a complicated and delicate issue, touching on propaganda, misinformation, authoritarianism on one side, and xenophobia and cultural identity issues on the other. Anthony Wong talking about the Tiananmen massacre, while a perfectly valid point to question the CCP, only offers the extreme of one side. Ho mentioned Montreal's influence on her upbringing. Well Montreal also deals with the Quebecois identity issue, and there's no introspection from Ho considering whether the exclusiveness is progressive. The film romanticizes Ho's sacrifices (which definitely are extraordinary), but fails to hold her to much standards. Ho is controversial for good reason. Her demand to the United Nations to remove China from human rights panels lacked seriousness. The 5 demands that HK protesters made was also not a serious proposal, aiming more to humiliate Carrie Lam than to bring real change. Lauding Ho's speech in front of the US Congress was also somewhat ironic, since Marco Rubio's hardly a champion of social justice in America. This is not to take away from the film's efforts to tell the story of HK's fight for freedom, but it lacks depth.
With respect to Ho herself, the film tells most of her life story faithfully, but carefully cuts out her love life. It's understandable why they did this, as her former flame is still active in the entertainment industry and trying to survive China's censorship. However it does feel cheap, since this is supposed to be "tell all". There were a few places in the film where it was almost unavoidable to talk about it, like her coming out and the concert tour which "pays tribute to this important person", but they covered it up by diverting to Anita Mui and political martyrship. This reminded me of Bohemian Rapsody pretending Freddie Murcury's straight for the most part. It also leaves out the piece of the puzzle that imo at least partially explains Ho's transition from playing by the rules to going all out against the machine.
Also missing from the film were many of the big names in the HK music industry who Denise was once close with. Again, it's understandable why almost none of them appeared in this documentary - they have careers - but the film might have benefitted by saving the story for a later date, when other artists and ppl who worked in the industry may have filled the stories up with different perspectives on how certain events took place, like the risks of coming out in a conservative culture, or CCP's warning to artists on political conformity. By only interviewing the likes of Anthony Wong, it created an echo chamber.
The film also implies that Ho's descent is completely due to her political activism, which is also somewhat romanticized to fit the narrative. She's aging and a couple years removed from releasing any hit songs. It's not that big a conspiracy that she can't pack the Coliseum anymore.
In all, this film did pick an interesting story, but in its efforts to stick to the narrative, lacked depth and became self confirming.
While I side with HK's fight for freedom and respects Ho's perseverance, I think it's still important to acknowledge the complexity of the political situation in HK and China. The film took the easy way out by playing the soundbites. It's easy to paint everything with a "China evil" brush, but it is quite a complicated and delicate issue, touching on propaganda, misinformation, authoritarianism on one side, and xenophobia and cultural identity issues on the other. Anthony Wong talking about the Tiananmen massacre, while a perfectly valid point to question the CCP, only offers the extreme of one side. Ho mentioned Montreal's influence on her upbringing. Well Montreal also deals with the Quebecois identity issue, and there's no introspection from Ho considering whether the exclusiveness is progressive. The film romanticizes Ho's sacrifices (which definitely are extraordinary), but fails to hold her to much standards. Ho is controversial for good reason. Her demand to the United Nations to remove China from human rights panels lacked seriousness. The 5 demands that HK protesters made was also not a serious proposal, aiming more to humiliate Carrie Lam than to bring real change. Lauding Ho's speech in front of the US Congress was also somewhat ironic, since Marco Rubio's hardly a champion of social justice in America. This is not to take away from the film's efforts to tell the story of HK's fight for freedom, but it lacks depth.
With respect to Ho herself, the film tells most of her life story faithfully, but carefully cuts out her love life. It's understandable why they did this, as her former flame is still active in the entertainment industry and trying to survive China's censorship. However it does feel cheap, since this is supposed to be "tell all". There were a few places in the film where it was almost unavoidable to talk about it, like her coming out and the concert tour which "pays tribute to this important person", but they covered it up by diverting to Anita Mui and political martyrship. This reminded me of Bohemian Rapsody pretending Freddie Murcury's straight for the most part. It also leaves out the piece of the puzzle that imo at least partially explains Ho's transition from playing by the rules to going all out against the machine.
Also missing from the film were many of the big names in the HK music industry who Denise was once close with. Again, it's understandable why almost none of them appeared in this documentary - they have careers - but the film might have benefitted by saving the story for a later date, when other artists and ppl who worked in the industry may have filled the stories up with different perspectives on how certain events took place, like the risks of coming out in a conservative culture, or CCP's warning to artists on political conformity. By only interviewing the likes of Anthony Wong, it created an echo chamber.
The film also implies that Ho's descent is completely due to her political activism, which is also somewhat romanticized to fit the narrative. She's aging and a couple years removed from releasing any hit songs. It's not that big a conspiracy that she can't pack the Coliseum anymore.
In all, this film did pick an interesting story, but in its efforts to stick to the narrative, lacked depth and became self confirming.