Ray Yeung | Paper Wrap Fire / 2015

consolations

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ray Yeung (screenwriter and director) Paper Wrap Fire / 2015 [13 minutes]

 

Hong Kong filmmaker Ray Yeung chose the title of his sixth film Paper Wrap Fire (2015) from a Chinese proverb, which calls up not only the obvious logic but suggests all the attempts usually made to control such calamitous events which are illogical, doomed, and often tragic if also, at times, necessary.

     The central figure of this New York-based film is Vincent (Alestair Shu) a Chinese-American teenager who is has reached one of his most unhappy moments of his life. The film begins with several young bullies attempting to beat him up in a concrete playground, calling him “fag” and scuffing up his face before his mother, Lisa (Rachel Lu), who’s been out shopping, chances upon the encounter and shouts them away. As she embraces her son and checks out his wounds, she also chastises him for allowing the boys to abuse him, arguing that he should stand up to them. Anyone who as a child has suffered such peer abuse can sympathize with Vincent’s feeling that he is being attacked by his mother for his inescapable torture; there is no way that one child might possibly protect himself from two or three boys at once. She demands that he stay home for the day from school, and he is only too ready to take advantage of the restriction except that when they near their derelict apartment, they see men pounding at their door, demanding immediate payment of rent, Lisa pulling Vincent with her down into the floor below so that she will not have to confront the debt collectors personally.

      She has a new job, however, and can’t miss it; despite a few telephone calls no one is able or willing to offer Vincent a place to hang out until she is through with her job, so she drops him off at the local community center, a dismal affair consisting of elderly Chinese men watching television and a large ping pong table with no one lithe and spry enough to play a game with him.

     He stands by the window, staring out onto the street with the blank eyes of a child bored to death but also suffering the deep despair of having no one who really cares about his existence except a busy and uncomprehending mother.

      Suddenly, a young doctor, Chen (Shing Ka), connected with the center, pushes a wheelchair holding an elderly woman into the room, the boy’s eyes immediately focused on the handsome man who returns his gaze with a gentle smile and notices as the boy’s eyes follow him around the room as he deposits the woman and turns on the radio player to a song certain to please her. A moment later Chen turns back to Vincent suggesting he’s allowed to change the channel to anything except hip-hop, the boy clearly appreciating his unexpected attention.

       It’s clear from the instant that Chen has walked into the room that the boy is riveted by the older man, who might be an older brother or a caring uncle. But Chen almost immediately tells the woman that he’s off from work, but that her daughter will soon be there to pick her up. As he leaves he drops his ID card, Vincent quickly retrieving it and running after the man, who has already made his way down the block.

       Vincent follows, obviously looking for the opportunity of actually meeting him but—given the way Yeung’s camera shifts and cuts the scenes of the “chase”—also intrigued by Chen’s destination. When Chen ducks into a massage parlor, we can almost sense Vincent’s disappointment and distress as through the window he observes the man talking to the manager before he disappears behind a curtain into the back rooms. Vincent returns to a stoop to wait out the visit.

       Yet like most young people his age, he is also curious, and when he observes the manager leaving the place, he peeks back into the parlor and enters, carefully making his way behind the curtain to peek in the back room where Chen lays half-naked, someone messaging his chest. The boy, who may be gay or not, is fascinated by seeing his sudden hero’s physique, but soon backs away before determining a moment later to get a better view and pulling up a small step-ladder to look over the partition.

    There he gets an eye-full of the oiled body of Chen, who, under cover, is also now being masturbated by the masseur. We don’t see it, but we can only imagine the boy’s eyes growing larger, but just as suddenly he sees the masseur herself, his mother who suddenly becomes aware of her peeping son.

     Back on the street, Lisa traipses home, Vincent angrily following. You can sense her horror in having been seen performing her job, her fear for how she has affected him. She cannot know that the man she was serving was also, in the boy’s imagination, a surrogate lover. We know this since immediately after his viewing he tore up Chen’s identification card and stomped on it; he is angrier because of the man’s behavior more than his mother’s.

      As their slowly climb the paint-scarred stairway to their apartment they see the door has been graffitied in Chinese: PAY UP WHORE. Lisa lowers herself to the floor, overwhelmed by her life and the recent events, Vincent moving to sit beside her. Tears flow from her eyes as her son reaches out to hold her hand in consolation for her grief.

      In Yeung’s brilliantly nuanced short film there is nothing else that needs to be said. Paper cannot wrap fire, but if it is all you have available, what can you do?

      In the years since the wonderful films such as this one, Yellow Fever, Doggy...Doggy, Derek & Lucas, and Entwine, Leung has released several notable feature films, the most recent of which, Suk, Suk (2019). won numerous film awards.

     I should add that Lucas Lechowski’s original score for this film is a notable contribution to the poignance of the work.

 

Los Angeles, September 20, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2021)