Five Days of Yam-Pak Movies ～ Day 3: Lovesick // 為情顛倒 (dir. Chiang Wai-Kwong/蔣偉光, 1952) - starring Yam Kim Fai (任劍輝) and Pak Suet Sin (白雪仙)
Commentary below the cut!
Summary The daughter of a shipping tycoon, Yam Ming Fai (Yam Kim Fai) runs the family business in Hong Kong while pretending to be a man, but dreams of being able to marry her male subordinate. Unfortunately for her, she finds out that he is already dating someone, a small-time singer named Chan Ping Sin (Pak Suet Sin). What else is a girl to do but try to seduce her crush’s girlfriend, to force them to break up? (Many things, surely, but the multitude of other options do not occur to Ming Fai.) But while Ming Fai wins the battle, she loses the war, because although Ping Sin falls for her, her crush gets engaged to another woman instead. There is also a subplot about a working-class couple who want to get married despite their parents’ disapproval, which feels almost like a whole separate movie folded into this one.
Despite the inevitably conservative ending, it’s a fun watch, made funnier by how the movie seems to wink at the audience with regard to the queer elements. At the start, the script has Ming Fai assert both her heterosexuality and gender-conformity to a female friend, but in the film itself Yam is bursting with a cheeky charm not found in her other characters, who are generally rather staid and earnest. There’s also a heavy emphasis on the flirting with Pak’s character, and there are multiple instances of Ming Fai boasting to her male crush about winning Ping Sin’s affections – supposedly to make him jealous, but she seems far too gleeful for this to be the case. Ping Sin herself is also an interesting case; there’s a large contrast between her harsh, dismissive treatment of her boyfriend and her sweet attitude towards Ming Fai throughout, which subtly undermines the ending wherein she returns to the former. And it would be remiss not to add that yes, the character names are definitely riffing on the actors’ names – “Yam Ming Fai” and a lot of the other characters’ names are obvious enough, but even the “Chan” in “Chan Ping Sin” comes from Pak Suet Sin’s real name, Chan Suk Leung/陳淑良. Make of that what you will.
Note: Sadly, this is the only extant film wherein Yam plays a female character who is romantically linked with Pak’s character in some way; copies no longer seem to exist for the five other examples, namely Lucky Strike/福至心靈 (1951), Stage-Fans’ Sweetheart/戲迷情人 (1952), Two Naughty Girls/一對胭脂馬 (1952), Love Affairs of the Opera Master/伶王艷史 (1953), The Clumsy Lover/糊塗脂粉客 (1953).
Links:
My post about Yam Kim Fai and Pak Suet Sin being queer icons
Full movie on Bilibili