Girls in the Hood

cover

Year of release: 1995

Genre: drama/exploitation

Director: Alan Lo

Action directors: Ridley Tsui, Bruce Law

Producer: Blacky Ko

Writer: Wong Sa-Fai

Cinematography: Wong Bo-Man

Music: John Wong

Editor: Cheung Kwok-Kuen

Stars: Emana Leung, Hung Siu-Wan, Chow Oi-Ling, Chan Hau-Ching, Ha Hung, Chan Haau-Ngok, Ching Ji-Gong, Sung Boon-Chung, Hui Suk-Han

Rated III for violence, language, drug use, nudity, and sexual situations

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Girls in the Hood  Girls in the Hood

Girls in the Hood  Girls in the Hood

Troubled teens were a popular subject for Hong Kong movies in the 1990's. Most notably through the Young and Dangerous series and their spin-offs, production companies were practically falling over each other to bring the latest tale of youth in revolt to the big screen. As might be expected, with so many similar pictures hitting the market at the same time, most of these films were not of the highest quality, selling themselves on the promise of sex and violence rather than any sort of artistic merit.

Alan Lo's 1995 entry Girls in the Hood is a prime example of this. Ostensibly, it is a social drama based around the social sub-culture of "no wash girls" -- pseudo-homeless young women who casually engage in sex and drugs -- but in reality, it's more of a straight-out Category III softcore smut romp. With this duality of focus, Lo's film doesn't quite know where to place its' emphasis, and ends up losing the audience's interest in the process.

The movie's lead character is Joey (Emana Leung), who leaves home after being dumped by her boyfriend. This sort of motivation (or lack thereof) is a big reason why the story falters. Sure, we're dealing with teenage girls -- not exactly the most rational people -- but many of the leads comes off as simply stupid and/or selfish, which does not go very far to making the characters sympathetic. At any rate, after a half-hearted suicide attempt outside of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre (a hangout for teens) Joey ends up joining up with a clique called the Van Group.

Though technically not a gang, the Van Group subscribes to many of the same rules of Triad culture. Under the guise of trying to protect each other and base survival, the young ladies have no qualms about screwing people over (both literally and figuratively) in order to get by. As you might expect, this isn't exactly a recipe for success, and eventually the girls' "live fast and die young" lifestyle catches up with them.

As a drama, Girls in the Hood doesn't succeed because of its' amateurish nature. I'm not sure if Alan Lo was trying to attempt more of a cinema verite style, but given his low-budget lineage, it may have been more of a monetary matter than stylistic. At any rate, this film is just flat and dull to look at. There's very little done in the way of interesting cinematography and editing, with the camera seemingly just placed in the center of a room and the actors just told to roll.

Speaking of the actors, honestly, none of them are very good. There's nothing truly bad about them, but it doesn't seem like they're trying all that hard. It probably speaks to their talent level of the actors involved that most of them didn't appear in anything before or since this movie graced the jade screen.

As for the seamier bits, there is certainly a lot of nudity thrust into the viewer's retinas. But, really, how many times can one watch two actors awkwardly grinding on each other's hips before the whole process becomes tiresome? Like the movie as a whole, the sex scenes occupy neither the truly dark or truly erotic sides of Category III cinema, instead coming off as a middling effort that was rushed to theatres in order to make a quick buck.

RATING: 5