Ho Chi

Reporter Yu Mong-yuen is recovering from a leg injury in his fiancee Man-wah's apartment. Bored, he looks out the rear window and observes the life of the neighbouring building. Among the tenants are a sugar-daddy and his mistress, a middle-aged man wants to marry a young girl, but she is in love with his son. Finally, she hatches a plot and makes the man agree to her marrying his son ; a sly fortune-teller ; a lively gym, a rich widow quarrels with the trainer of a gymnasium because his dog has bitten her cat ; and an opera school, a woman signs, leaning on the balcony, and a man tries to strangle her. In fact they are rehearsing an opera…… One evening, Wah is on the night shift, and Yuen watches the opera troupe rehearse to the end. Under the influence of drugs, Yu mistakenly believes that a divorced man has murdered a taxi dancer. He alerts the police, but the whole thing is nothing more than a misunderstanding.

Lawyer Fan Kam-man believes that his wife Chun Yuen-yung perished in a plane crash three years ago and walks down the aisle again with Yan Bik-kei. In fact, Chun survived a crash-landing on a deserted island with fellow passenger Wong Ah-lik, a biologist. Returning to civilisation, Chun sabotages their wedding night at the hotel. Overjoyed with her safe return, Fan pulls off a feat with his mother and wife to terrify Yan into divorcing him. However the lie is exposed when Wong shows up. Unyielding, the women settle to serve as wives to the same man. Mistaking Fan for the person Chun is going to see, the eavesdropping Yan goes to the date in her stead and unwittingly sleeps with Wong. Yan finally settles for Wong, putting an end to the topsy-turvy.

Hong Kong thriller.

Chor Yuen started his directorial career with a bang. From its very first image, The Natural Son establishes Chor as a filmmaker of stylistic flourish, which would be sustained in various forms throughout his long tenure. Adapted from '30 cents' pulp fiction, it is a Kong Ngee melodrama made in the studio's mould, with Westernised characters and trendy middle-class lifestyles. Yet, Chor's first film is not exempt from the social urgency that characterises the Cantonese cinema of his father, Cheung Wood-yau. The film cloaks its entertainment in a moral deliberation on blood ties, its story about the raising of a bastard child a head-on challenge of archaic family values. An ostentatious start for a colourful and eventful career.