Film Review: Hotel Soul Good (2018)- Two Cents Worth of Hope
Updated: Aug 4, 2021
#FilmReview #HotelSoulGood #影評 #女皇撞到正
"If you want to see capitalism in action, go to Hong Kong."
- Milton Friedman (1)This Hong Kong horror comedy film《女皇撞到正》(2018; Dir. Pak-Wing Yan) is psychologically realistic.
The protagonist Mei qi (played by Chrissie Chau) is a typical Hong Kong success story of ordinary people in this world's top class Neo liberalist society which complemented by the guru of this kind of capitalism, Milton Friedman.
Mei qi is a manager of the internationally high brand hotel in Hong Kong who is a typical individualist and a ''killer'' manager.
Mei qi's image is admired by parents and communities as a success story of ordinary citizens.
The Act One of this film sharply and clearly expressed typical phenomena of the working environment of Hong Kong.
Audience see growing enigma toward cold blooded ''killer'' manager= a good manager among hotel co-workers. And Mei qi also gets involved in an office politics with the general manager and her boyfriend who ambitiously gets rid of his boss=girlfriend by conspiring with the general manager for their maximum personal merits in the small world of money making.
This corporate tragedy and encounter with Helena Law Lan's Taoist master leads this protagonist to meet three relative ghosts. Her grandfather A Bo (Richard Ng); her father Bao Ya Hui (Eric Kot) and her mother Auntie (Maggie Shiu) who later support the protagonist and her new boyfriend Zhang Zi-jin (Kai-Chung Cheung) on their new ''haunted'' hotel business.
Zhang Zi-jin is a comical character, not a sexist and traumatic on his ceased ex-girlfriend who gets cursed in the hell and unable to reborn as a result of Zhang Zi-jin's hopeless one-sided love toward the ex-girlfriend on her death.
After Act Two, the film structure has three key action lines and it's divided into these pieces.
The first one is the protagonist realising true identities of the three ghosts; the second one is that how the protagonist and Zhang Zi-jin to deal with the ghost of his ex girlfriend by finding a way to get her reborn in human society; the third one is that a conflict between the protagonist and her last company she worked.
Towards the end of Act Two, the rhythm gets dull, and its story focus is blurred among these complicated lines which dealt in unbalanced way.