Ann Hui’s 2002 drama July Rhapsody, receiving its first American release, defuses the sensationalist potential of its story about a high school teacher, Lam (Jackey Cheung) cheating on his wife Man-ching (Anita Mui) with his student Choy-Lam (Karena Lam). Hui and screenwriter Ivy Ho treat the subject in a slightly elliptical manner. July Rhapsody would probably be rated PG-13 by the MPA; it suggests that the teacher or and student are having sex but keeps the exact details offscreen. It lays out the long-term effects of abuse, difficulties of middle-class married life, and the traps laid for young women without turning any of its characters into an easily hissable villain.
Hui isn’t unknown in the U.S. One of the leading lights in Hong Kong’s New Wave of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, her best-known film is Boat People, which received a wide arthouse release in 1982 and was released by Criterion on Blu-Ray. (It’s now streaming on the Criterion Channel, alongside Keep Rolling, a documentary about the director.) While Hui’s work hasn’t received steady distribution overseas, it continues to get attention. In 2012, Roger Ebert placed A Simple Life on his final year-end top 10 list. The continued interest in Hui led to this revival of July Rhapsody, but the majority of her 48 films remain unavailable. She never specialized in action movies, so Hollywood remained uninterested when it scooped up many of the city’s major directors in the ‘90s.
As major pop stars, both Mui and Cheung were cast against type as a quiet, self-deprecating teacher and a homemaker. When he says “I’m not handsome,” it’s hard to believe he actually thinks so; despite graying sideburns, he looks younger than his age. Nonetheless, his turn as the teacher is believable. The story’s tension is related to class; without exactly resenting them, Lam’s acutely aware that some of his students, including Choy-Lam, come from wealthier families. Out drinking with former friends who’ve turned to the business world, he becomes an antsy fly on the wall as they get increasingly buzzed. A roving camera reflects his jittery mood and feeling of unease.
July Rhapsody starts with Lam talking with his son (Eric Kot) on the beach. (He’s not the biological father.) Pointedly, the two discuss the fact that the young man is about to graduate university. Ho’s script looks back to the past to explain Lam and his wife’s unhappiness, with flashbacks to their own days as college students. He gazed at her ponytail in class, leading to a more lasting connection. In the present, Choy-Lam nurses a crush on Lam, drawing pictures of him while he lectures. When she meets him in his office, she makes sure to stand up, using her body flirtatiously. (The scene is mostly shot in close-ups.) The two grow closer.
In its second half, July Rhapsody deepens its narrative by circling back to the roots of Lam and his wife’s relationship and the circumstances of their son’s birth, although it would be a spoiler to say anything further. However, he steps further into this unhappy marriage by dating Choy-Lam, rather than escaping from it. The film is a web of connections from which Lam can’t escape, with a female perspective fully established in the final third. Its editing poetically resurrects fleeting moments from the past.
July Rhapsody sports a muted palette, where orange clashes with blue. (Choy-Lam draws a flower alternating both colors in one of her adoring drawings of Lam.) Despite the excitement of new love, these colors reflect low-key depression, with bright shades popping out. Lam is associated visually with drab domesticity, while Choy-Lam goes to the mall to buy pink crop-tops and scarf down sugary drinks. He sees himself as a guardian of classic Chinese culture. One of Hong Kong’s biggest stars (with roles in landmark films like Rouge, The Heroic Trio and Drunken Master II), Mui would die of cancer the year after July Rhapsody’s release, only 40, and this was her final film released during her lifetime. She pulls off the difficult task of playing a character who initially seems cast aside by the story, only to slowly reveal her importance to it.
Ivy Ho also wrote the script for one of Hong Kong’s greatest films, Peter Chan’s Comrades, Almost A Love Story. The dream of escape that motivates that film’s characters, who drift from mainland China to Hong Kong to New York, is repressed here, manifesting a deep connection to China instead. The Yangtze river plays an important role in July Rhapsody, including its final images. It’s a film about people trapped in destructive patterns set in their youth, harming others by continuing them. By the end, they’re deepened their loneliness rather than finding new love.
“July Rhapsody” is out Friday, in a new 4K restoration, in New York and San Francisco. It expands to Los Angeles on July 26.