Ryu Kenichi is connected with the Taiwanese sub-group, headed by Yang Weimin (Sihung Lung). With nary a cop nor detective in sight, Sleepless Town dwells in a self-sustaining underworld fraught with complexity: Chinese gangsters in Japan. From that point on, we're totally immersed in this mixed world of outsiders. To them, he's an outsider: he explains his "bastard" origins: half Japanese, half Chinese (casting comments on diegesis here: Kaneshiro himself is Taiwanese, of mixed Japanese Chinese parentage). The film addresses its central issue right away: the prologue opens with narrator/protagonist Ryu Kenichi/Liu Jianyi (played by Takeshi Kaneshiro) stopped by police in Shinjuku. It is a hybrid in many ways: a Lee Chi-ngai magical romance grafted onto a baroque neo-noir, a Hong Kong art film cum Japanese contemporary hyper-urban thriller. Sleepless Town, a Japan/Hong Kong coproduction, internalizes the issue of hybridization that can beset transnational film production. Coproductions, though, can come with their own problems, central among them a set of mixed or conflicting agendas. Given the recent phenomenal flow of pop culture products between Japan and Hong Kong, in both directions, it's not surprising that prominent HK filmmakers like Lee Chi-ngai find themselves working on Japanese-financed films like Sleepless Town (others include The Christ of Nanjing (1996), Kitchen (1997), and Moonlight Express (1998)).
The Hong Kong film industry, mired in financial crisis for several years now, has looked to several alternative strategies for survival: idiosyncratic, ultra-low budget films that are quick to produce, and less risky if they lose money ( Made in Hong Kong (1997), 9413 (1998), Love Will Tear Us Apart (1999), The Accident (1999)) massive high-concept and high-budget spectaculars that aim to fill the SAR's theaters again ( Stormriders (1998), and A Man Called Hero (1999)) and coproductions, with the mainland, European investors, or East Asian partners who still have money to spend.
Xiao Lian/Sato NatsumiĪlso starring :Seijun Suzuki, Toshiya Nagasawa, Kippei Shiina, Shosuke Tanihara, Producers: Masato Hara Tsuguhiko Kadokawa (exec. Screenplay: Lee Chi-ngai Seishu Hase (novel
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