Movie Review: May We Chat/微交少女

Philip Yung directed  May We Chat, his second film. His first was 2009’s Glamorous Youth, and like that film, May We Chat/微交少女 is a Category III movie about teenagers.

That’s an odd contradiction; Category III movies aren’t viewable by anyone under 18.

Not legally anyway. But that’s why God invented the Internet, right?

May We Chat/微交少女 tells the story of three young women who meet through using WeChat, a social media app that’s very popular in mainland China.

The film would have us believe it’s also popular in Hong Kong,  but very few of the young people I talked here seem to use it.

They all think it’s ‘too mainland.’ Whatever that means.

Kabby Hui, Heidi Lee, and Rainky Wai play a trio of young women from different backgrounds with different problems.

Wai Wai has to take care of her drug addict mother and her little sister, a juvenile delinquent in training. 

Yee Gee is a deaf-mute who was unceremoniously dumped on her grandmother by her uncaring parents.

The only way she can earn money (apparently) is by compensated dating, which is a phrase that means f@#$ing strangers for money.

She’s a prostitute.

That don’t make her a bad person, I’m just sayin’…

Yan is unhappy that her mother has remarried and found money if not love.

These young women have never met in real life until Yan disappears.

Brought together by this crisis, Wai  Wai and Yee Gee search for her.

These characters are vividly portrayed by the three actresses.

I really enjoyed and admired their work.

I do sincerely worry that Rainky Wai is going to take a lot of flak in the local tabloid media for being naked in the movie, but what would Hong Kong be without grossly hypocritical attitudes about sexuality?

The best indication of how well these young women do their jobs is the way in which they breathe life into an excessively melodramatic scrīpt.

I had a real problem with the way the story develops and the way I think the director wants us to feel about these young women and the world they live in.

I’m not a parent.

I bet that’s apparent.

Still, I don’t think that’s the only reason I had a hard time seeing these kids as anything other than self-absorbed, irresponsible brats.

But just because they’re young and stupid doesn’t mean that they should be excused from responsibility for their own dumbness.

If you want me to feel bad for naive young women who have terrible things happen to them, maybe you might want to write it so that they’re not always the catalysts for their victimization.

I’m (not) sorry; if a woman knowingly allows herself to get roophied and ends up having a train run on her, don’t blame me if I think that she brought it on herself.

Because she did.

Don’t try and tell me it’s the fault of an uncaring world. It’s the fault of an immature and stupid person.

May We Chat ends up coming off as a pedantic cautionary tale, but it’s so exploitative that it makes the preaching ring even more hollowly. The depictions of the exploitation of teenagers are themselves so grossly exploitative that I was sincerely offended.

How exploitative were they?

I couldn’t look away.

And I got the impression I wasn’t supposed to.

If you want me to feel bad for a young woman in the sex industry, don’t show me lingering shots of her breasts being humped up against a glass shower door.

Because all you’re doing is committing the same sin you’re accusing the world of.

By making May We Chat/微交少女 so explicitly Cat III, the director makes the film off limits to the very demographic that really needs to see it: teenagers.

They are also the only demographic likely to either overlook or not notice the heavy-handed melodramatic excesses.

May We Chat/微交少女 impressed me, but not in a good way.

I really disliked the way it developed and presented the story, even as I really admire the performances in the story.

Too bad that they end up clumsily exploited by the movie.

Just like the audience.