It is significant that the new Denise Ho documentary, Denise Ho: Becoming The Song, is coming out on July 1, National Day of the People's Republic of China, date when protests usually erupt in Hong Kong, and the day after the establishment of the new "National Security" law in the SAR. The law, forced upon the home of Denise Ho, is likely to spawn more protests, and increased international condemnation, perhaps even more than the protests in 2019, shown in the film, where Hongkongers took to the streets to rage against the extradition bill. The irony of all this is that, under the new "National Security" law in Hong Kong, this film could very likely be banned, and Denise arrested.
To its credit, this film covers the dangers of speaking out in Hong Kong, and maintains a suitably serious tone when discussing the limited future options for the citizens of the place I called home for nearly 3 years. Some 10 years ago, I was a Hong Kong cinema fan, blogging about films that starred actresses like Miriam Yeung and Shu Qi, co-stars of Denise Ho earlier in her career, and writing about going to the Hong Kong Film Archive on the anniversary of Anita Mui's death, and here I am in, six years back in America, reviewing a doc about Mui's most famous protege. Denise Ho began her career in Canada but came to fame after Mui's death, in the tail-end of the heyday of Cantopop, as the Mainland's influence on the city's entertainment industry was overshadowing lots of local talent.
While Denise Ho: Becoming The Song spends a great deal of time covering Denise Ho's role in the protests in Hong Kong last year and earlier, and her path to her participation, it also spends a good deal of time on Denise's youth, and her rise to stardom. In this section, anyone who's even a little bit of a fan of Hong Kong entertainment will be in heaven. The segments on Denise's mentoring by the late Anita Mui, and the clips of Ho's earliest appearances on TV, are engrossing. Doing the difficult job of condensing a career, and placing it in a context that also needs to be summarized for non-Hong Kong fans is no easy task but director Sue Williams did a great job in this film. Things move fast here but there's just enough information to keep a viewer up to speed, and enough to keep fans of Cantopop very happy.
Of course, Ho's career, like any other singer in the last 10 years in Hong Kong, encompassed fame in Mainland China, and the documentary is clear-eyed about the need for singers like Ho to market themselves there, and the enormous amounts of money to be had outside Hong Kong. To that end, Denise Ho: Becoming The Song hints at just what Ho's lost by being blacklisted as it were from Mainland performances. Less clear is her ill-fated work with Lancôme which the film sort of rushes through. I think having some familiarity with those events would be useful, though one gets the gist of just how money endorsement money Ho's lost because of her support of the protests in Hong Kong.
Denise Ho: Becoming The Song works best when it illustrates a unique talent in an industry full of cookie-cutter stars, and in a city where the real stars are dead, retired, or off earning RMB over the border. In that sense, this film really serves its subject well, placing Ho's career in its proper place in the larger history of Cantopop and Hong Kong entertainment. It's that history that parallels the changes in the city since the Handover only 23 years ago. Ho came of age during that era, and her awareness of the larger world enabled her to understand why the protests mattered, and how very much could be lost.
Given the seriousness of what's transpiring up to this moment in Hong Kong, a documentary about a singer might seem like a thing of little importance. However, the ease with which Denise Ho began protesting, and the risks she took to her career and her life, are substantial ones. This film shows how quickly a protected space can be threatened, and how a free city can be threatened with, if not extinction, suppression and fear. Denise Ho: Becoming The Song works so well precisely because Denise Ho seems the unlikeliest of protesters to those in West. If would be as if Lady Gaga had become the figurehead for a movement. Ho might not be a figurehead but she is probably one of the most famous personalities in Hong Kong to clearly and unequivocally support the Hong Kong protests. In that sense, she's a hero, and the subject of a fascinating, all-too-brief documentary.
Denise Ho: Becoming The Song is out today via Kino Marquee.
[Photos: Kino Lorber]