With its playful sounding title, cheery home video and cinema poster artwork, one could easily mistake Chicken A La Queen for another generic, saccharine romantic comedy. However, this couldn't be further from the truth! Chicken A La Queen is a relentlessly gruelling and depressing tale of the lives of two teenage prostitutes in Hong Kong, with an unflinching emphasis on the brutality they're forced to endure at the hands of their pimps.
P. S. (Sarah Lee) is a partially deaf teenage hooker with a fiery temper and a huge loan-shark debt weighing on her shoulders! Her best friend P. K. (Rachel Lee, Sarah Lee's real-life sister) is also a prostitute, and shares the same pimp as P. S., Ah-Long (Roy Cheung). The story mainly revolves around the increasingly volatile relationship between the two girls and their leader (played by Kwok Yiu-Wah), and a sub-plot involving Shing Fui-On as the ineffectual Sergeant Mak.
Imagine if Ringo Lam's School On Fire had a spin-off movie featuring the further antics of Roy Cheung's 'Brother Smart' and Sarah Lee's 'Sandy'. And, someone tweaked the melodrama dial all the way up to 10 and left it there for the duration of the film. That's the best way I can sum up Chicken A La Queen. Not that this is a bad thing. School On Fire is one of my favourite films of all time, so to see Sarah Lee and Roy Cheung together again in similar form is very welcome. Chicken A La Queen is thankfully original and accomplished enough to shrug off any further comparisons to Lam's film. Sarah Lee turns in an absolute show-stealing, tour de force performance as P. S. here. Her plucky character is forced to go through a wide range of emotions, which she handles all very convincingly. Sarah Lee's work in Chicken A La Queen is easily on par with her role in School On Fire, which she won a Hong Kong Best Supporting Actress award for.
The action is frequent and quite hard-hitting, with the majority of the violence being towards females. The girls are beaten and thrown around like rag dolls throughout the film (kudos to the actresses for their endurance!) but there are also some fairly bloody gang fights with choppers and metal pipes which are well choreographed. The film threatens to go off the rails towards the end, with an over-the-top, melodramatic showdown on top of some rickety scaffolding.
Chicken A La Queen is not exactly a feel good movie but, if you're in the mood for a well-acted, realistic drama interspersed with frequent gritty action, then this under-rated film easily delivers the goods. Recommended!
4 out of 5
Review source: Golden Cinema City, VHS (Hong Kong) (Cantonese language with English subtitles)
P. S. (Sarah Lee) is a partially deaf teenage hooker with a fiery temper and a huge loan-shark debt weighing on her shoulders! Her best friend P. K. (Rachel Lee, Sarah Lee's real-life sister) is also a prostitute, and shares the same pimp as P. S., Ah-Long (Roy Cheung). The story mainly revolves around the increasingly volatile relationship between the two girls and their leader (played by Kwok Yiu-Wah), and a sub-plot involving Shing Fui-On as the ineffectual Sergeant Mak.
Imagine if Ringo Lam's School On Fire had a spin-off movie featuring the further antics of Roy Cheung's 'Brother Smart' and Sarah Lee's 'Sandy'. And, someone tweaked the melodrama dial all the way up to 10 and left it there for the duration of the film. That's the best way I can sum up Chicken A La Queen. Not that this is a bad thing. School On Fire is one of my favourite films of all time, so to see Sarah Lee and Roy Cheung together again in similar form is very welcome. Chicken A La Queen is thankfully original and accomplished enough to shrug off any further comparisons to Lam's film. Sarah Lee turns in an absolute show-stealing, tour de force performance as P. S. here. Her plucky character is forced to go through a wide range of emotions, which she handles all very convincingly. Sarah Lee's work in Chicken A La Queen is easily on par with her role in School On Fire, which she won a Hong Kong Best Supporting Actress award for.
The action is frequent and quite hard-hitting, with the majority of the violence being towards females. The girls are beaten and thrown around like rag dolls throughout the film (kudos to the actresses for their endurance!) but there are also some fairly bloody gang fights with choppers and metal pipes which are well choreographed. The film threatens to go off the rails towards the end, with an over-the-top, melodramatic showdown on top of some rickety scaffolding.
Chicken A La Queen is not exactly a feel good movie but, if you're in the mood for a well-acted, realistic drama interspersed with frequent gritty action, then this under-rated film easily delivers the goods. Recommended!
4 out of 5
Review source: Golden Cinema City, VHS (Hong Kong) (Cantonese language with English subtitles)