August 2004
For most people, renting a video is an option for when you want to stay in and be entertained; a last resort for those rare evenings when there is nothing better to do. Yet for me and countless other Little Saigonese who know Video F on Brookhurst and McFadden, we are rental addicts. We are prey to Video F and the very system they have branded: a selection of hundreds of films all for a dollar. The hook is: it’s a one day rental. You have to come back the next day…and the day after that and…the vicious cycle just continues.
Once past the entrance, I make a b-line for the last section. Like an unmarked grave, it carries the movies Hollywood would never know. To us, they are our yellow-skinned equals, telling stories similar to our lives, eating with chopsticks – all this, only with flawless skin and the best gadgets available to a cosmopolitan East. This shelf is home to the Asian Cinema section.
My drug of choice? Hong Kong Romantic Comedies.
Starting at the top shelf and moving to the bottom, I proceed to pick up every video, examine it cover to cover, then place the video back in its (proximate) order. Unfortunately for me, Hong Kong Romantic Comedies are mixed in with her lesser, more scandalous cousins: super cops, triads, horror films, and skin flicks with undeniably exxxcellent ratings. What kind of people rent films like The Demented Sex Goddess of the Ming Dynasty or Gangsters of the Barbeque Deli?
In all truth, my rental taste is not exactly high art either. I pick titles like And I Hate You So; Good Times, Bed Times; and Help! My Pretend Boyfriend is Gay.
Why, if the gangster film is cathartic enough to prevent you from committing heinous crimes, doesn’t the romantic comedy prevent you from making the same mistake? I hoped so, and would watch the love stories unfold with an utter vulnerability, a status reserved only for the length of the film. By the time the credits rolled, I would vow to save myself some grief by becoming a Buddhist nun.
The Hong Kong Romantic Comedy is really variations of the same theme paired with top celebrities and mishaps. Devotees will easily identify the two big barriers of the character driven plot - miscommunication and bad timing. In 12 Nights, the romance between Cecilia Cheung and Eason Chan starts off based on a lie. Through cell phone calls, subway rides, and company cocktail parties – they never find themselves in a comfortable enough situation to reveal their true feelings. Even in the cinematic version of our relationships, there is so much left unsaid. The fate of the couple is dependent on their timing – often cruelly inconvenient. A classic example of doomed feng shui will be Wong Kar Wai’s, In the Mood for Love. The two protagonists meet while married to other people but then have the chance to reunite years later. Back in the very apartment building where they had first laid eyes on each other, Tony Leung knocks on the wrong door (the one not labeled opportunity) while Maggie Cheung sits in the very next room! Inevitably, we all miss each other by a strand.
I consider myself a tough critic of films. Simply put: I have no time for the bad ones, all the time in the world for the good ones. However, something about a Hong Kong Romantic Comedy just speaks to me. TK said I was hard to watch films with – I would make a thousand comments aloud while he would often doze off. Later, as if scripted, he would slip a bag of mini muffins into my carry-on bag; the least he could do for dumping me then sending me home on a six-hour flight.
After nearly being swallowed up by the Armageddon-sized construction in Little Saigon, I survived this summer on baguettes, runs in the park, and endless movie rentals - all of which helped me see beyond my tiny world of loss. But is it the hopeless you-know-what in me who wants to believe he and I are that couple with unfortunate timing - narrowly missing each other at the dim sum stand?
The owner of Video F has come to recognize me and braces himself when I enter five minutes before closing. Dressed in a thinning wife beater and belted trousers, he sits behind that counter like only a veteran in the video rental industry can – slouched and yet ready to call the cops. On this night, the owner finally hassles me for stopping by too frequently. He asks why I never rent from other sections. He questions how I always “forget” my membership card and send him searching through a database full of Nguyens who live in Westminster. He demands to know why I am among the shady individuals who seem to systematically ransack the Asian movie section every time, day in and day out.
I know that he is just teasing and since I don’t carry that pout around anymore, I guess I can take it. I also know that he and his staff never alphabetize, much less have any kind of organization. Video F must be the only video store that is sorted by its own customers, and we have come to sort it by need. And I know that he knows, and anybody who knows Asian cinema, that in Hong Kong – you don’t get your heart broken the same way twice.
