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Film review: The World of Suzy Wong
This classic film, recently restored and re-released, is based on Richard Mason’s best selling book, and continues to be the best portrayal yet of expatriate love with a callgirl.
Based in Hong Kong in 1960, William Holden plays Robert Lomax, an American taking a year out from his dull architectural practice in the States to see if he can develop a career as an artist. Choosing the exotica of Hong Kong, he chances upon “Mei Li” (Nancy Kwan) on the Star Ferry, only to be sharply rebuffed by her, yet entranced by her beauty.
Believing her to be the wealthy daughter of a Chinese businessman, they part, only for her to re-appear in his life in a Wanchai bar, next to the seedy hotel-cum-brothel Lomax has inadvertently elected to stay in. Except she’s not really Mei Li but the prettiest hooker in town. All sorts of shenanigans then take place as various British sailors and the odd lonely businessman seek solace and part-time lovers in the bar and the hotel’s rooms, yet the enigmatic Suzie has found a way to deal with the appalling moral dilemmas she has found herself in, and is the ultimate ‘tart with a heart’ and naturally, a ‘good girl’ underneath the squalor of her necessary prostitution.
The story hangs together well, and is fairly lifelike – possibly scandalized that Hong Kong / Chinese girls could not possibly be like that, the film has had its critics, but essentially is a good old-fashioned love story. It deals with the issues facing inter-racial relationships at a time when ladies still wore tiaras for dinner, and gentlemen were introduced to the social elite by way of personal recommendations, and the head of the Chartered Bank could arrange anything for an expat from a job to a marriage with a well-connected female expatriate. But as the same Bank head sadly recommends to Lomax, “you have to understand. Westerners with Chinese wives; well you couldn’t work at the bank. There are too many of my shareholders wives whose husbands have dallied with them and consequently these women detest Chinese girls”.
Apart from the plot, and its glimpses into the continuing cultural issues that foreigners face in China, the film also offers a fascinating look back at a Hong Kong nearly 50 years ago – some parts still recognizable, others long since torn down. In this, and indeed the plot, as Lomax is drawn increasingly into the tragic circumstances surrounding Suzie’s life and begins to respect her courage in the face of adversity, the film does not disappoint and ultimately ends up being both a great and poignant description of a highly controversial love affair, but also a joyful look at booming Hong Kong as it was 50 years past.
Highly recommended and a timely re-release.
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