MY YOUNG AUNTIE/ ZHANG BEI

Hong Kong, 1981, 121 minutes, Colour.
Chia Liang Liu, Kara Hui, Hou Hsiao.
Directed by Chia Liang Liu.

Filmed in the early 1980s, directed by the veteran Chia Liang Liu, who also appears as one of the central characters, the inheriting nephew. He had a long list of acting and directing performances, a focus on martial arts.

So, decades before the kung fu comedies of directors like Stephen Chow, there was a tradition of blending comedy with action. This one has many amusing moments but also is an exercise in a combination of pageantry, fights, comedy.

An old man about to die does not want his worthless brother to inherit his estate so he marries the young girl who cares for him, Kara Hui, who has a good box office combination of beauty and martial agility. She has a mission to travel to find one of his nephews and give him the deeds of the property. So, she travels by boat to find the nephew.

In the meantime, the nephew, who also has no difficulties with kung fu, has an old adviser and then hurries to the wharf to meet his auntie, initially not believing who she was. However, he accepts her and the situation.

Then his son who has been away in Hong Kong at University turns up with a group of his friends, with English first names, playing sport, raucous University students. There is also a difficulty in their believing who the auntie is.

Plot -wise, the brother who missed out on the estate is advised by a rather smooth-talking counsellor to track down the heir, steal the documents and, if there are any difficulties, sending some thugs and some martial arts experts. All this happens leading to quite an amount of the running time devoted to fights.

Initially, the auntie and the young student have their clashes – the audience prepared for this because of the thugs who meet her at the boat and her vigorous disposing of them all.

The comedy and pageantry: the young men take auntie into the city and let her loose in the shops, experiences she has never had, having a new hairstyle, buying perfumes, buying a lavish dress with a split skirt – and then involving her in fights again this being very awkward. There is another sequence when the young men go to a ball and there is a lot of fancy dress and dancing, especially the boys doing some turns that have been borrowed from Hollywood musicals.

Not the solemn kind of martial arts history – but a rather lavish and sometimes extravagant humorous variation.