Over My Dead Body is a movie that I need(ed) time to process! (Film review)

  

A very Hong Kong movie that, nonetheless, has 

already screened in Japan and the UK!

 

Over My Dead Body (Hong Kong, 2023)

- Ho Cheuk-tin, director

- Starring: Wong You-nam, Ronald Cheng, Alan Yeung, Teresa Mo, Jennifer Yu, Edan Liu, Lau Kong, Jiro Lee, etc.

 

Back in late 2019, when the Hong Kong police got pretty generous with the tear gas, a woman reportedly screamed at the riot police to go away before they tear gassed her area -- because the value of her apartment would go down by a million (Hong Kong dollars) if they were to treat the neighborhood to one of their tear gas buffets.  I tell this story here not just as an excuse to bring up the anti-extradition bill turned pro-democracy protests once again but to give an idea of how people can obsess about property prices in Hong Kong and have what can seem like irrational or, at least, exaggerated fears about certain developments causing the value of their property to drop.  And it's in this context that the attitudes and behavior of a number of characters of Over My Dead Body can make some kind of sense.

 

Director Ho Cheuk-tin's sophomore effort is a satirical comedy involving the residents of the Seaside Heights apartment block who find what appears to be a dead body of a naked man on their floor.  While their first reaction is to call the police, this is quickly followed by a disinclination to do so -- for fear that their residence will become known as a "murder home" and plummet in value.  Thoughts soon turn to trying to figure out how to dispose of the corpse in such a way that can't be traced back to them.

 

This dark matter initially just concerns the adult residents of Flat 14A (characters played by Wong You-nam, Jennifer Yu, Teresa Mo and Alan Leong).  But they soon also get the elderly couple in Flat 14B (essayed by Bonnie Wong and Lau Kong), the dog-lover owner of Flat 14C, and father and son living in Flat 14D (portrayed by Ronald Cheng and Edan Liu) involved too; with the men folk largely tasked with moving the dead body to a nearby public housing estate known for its suicides (and whose residents won't worry about nose-diving property prices since they don't own the units in which they live).

 

Those unaware of Hong Kong superstitions might miss the significance of these flats' being on the 14th floor.  Suffice to say here that 14 sounds to Cantonese speakers like "will certainly die" and, along with the numbers 4 and 24, will often not be included for Hong Kong apartment building floor numbers.  (Also worth noting: there's another allusion to the deadly number 4 in this movie in terms of the times of the night that are shown whenever Alan Leong's character checks his watch.)

 

Another set of Cantonese homophones that is worth noting when viewing Over My Dead Body is that of "male corpse" and "blue ribbon" (a term for those folks who fall into the pro-police/government/Beijing end of the political equation).  Your mileage may vary but suffice to say that there are a considerable number of people in Hong Kong who find the very idea and conceit of people desperately trying to make sure that a "blue ribbon" doesn't darken their doorstep, never mind enter their living space, to be absolutely hysterical -- and for that one joke to be enough to power and propel an entire movie!

 

In fairness to the makers of Over My Dead Body, there is more than one target of their comic barbs; with the calling out of residents who don't give proper lai see to building security guards and Hong Kongers who let their imaginations run wild after listening to property ads being particularly on point.  But especially after having assembled such a great cast for this movie, I wish that the ensemble had been given stronger material to work with, and characters to play that were more easy to like.  (As things stand, the most sympathetic person in the film may well be Jiro Lee's priggish security guard!)

 

Perhaps I'm being overly demanding but director Ho Cheuk-tin -- who won the Best New Director prize at the Hong Kong Film Awards this past Sunday -- set such high standards with his first film (last year's The Sparring Partner).  Something I'll say in Over My Dead Body's favor though: I actually like it and its ideas more the more I think about them; with my feeling more favorable about the movie now than I did in the minutes after I left the cinema post viewing it!     

 

My rating for this film: 6.0