Portland Street Blues

Portland Street Blues looks at the world we know from Hong Kong Young and Dangerous films (screened in Rotterdam during the Golden Harvest retrospective in 1997). The world of the Triads is on the move. The two most important gangs, Hung Hing and Tong Sing, have just ended a war that took a lot of lives. Now a two-week cease-fire has been agreed. Sister Thirteen (the amazing Sandra Ng), the only woman of the twelve gang members, tries to rescue her girlfriend Sa Sa from the rival gang. But her lover has betrayed her. When Thirteen has to honour her recently deceased father soon after, that evokes a long flashback about the most important relationships in her life. We go back to the time when her roving father was asenior gang member with lots of problems and she used to lead men astray on the street with her youth friend Yun. Both the girls were in love with the attractive boxer Coke Chuk, but also with each other.The acting in this genre film is stunning. ‘Thirteen’s reunions with Yun (Kristy Yeung) and Coke (Alex Fong), the two people she has deeply loved and irrevocably lost, are written and played with such depth of feeling that you almost have to look away,’ says Tony Rayns. ‘Best of all is the figure of Thirteen herself: a plausible, non-iconic dyke at the centre of a realistic, mainstream thriller. Three Cheers.’