Although better known among Western audiences for his trademark brand of slick neo-noirs and grim crime thrillers, the visionary Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To’s experimentation with genre cinema goes far beyond the confines of stylized action flicks. In 1996, along with his frequent directorial collaborator Wai Ka-fai, To co-founded the independent production company Milkyway Image. Having both made their start in the city’s television studio system, To and Wai sought to build a unique brand of filmmaking just as Hong Kong’s domestic industry was at the tail-end of the New Wave’s heydays. At the turn of the millennium, migration of talent toward the blossoming mainland industry, as well as local crises like the SARS outbreak, forced Milkway to adopt a doctrine of austerity. With limited funding, To and Wai had to take their arthouse sensibilities and package them with mass commercial appeal in mind, usually in the form of romantic comedies and gangster films. One of the overlooked examples from this era of the Milky Way catalog is To and Wai’s My Left Eye Sees Ghosts (2002).
Having only been married for seven days, May (Sammi Cheng) loses her husband Daniel, a Stanford-educated luxury fashion executive, in a freak scuba-diving accident during a Caribbean getaway. Though inheriting late spouse’s riches, the seemingly apathetic May must face the vitriol of Mrs. Tsui (Bonnie Wong), her new mother-in-law, and Susan (Lee San-san), her husband’s jealous ex who still holds a high position in the family company. Three years later, May appears to have fully settled into her new digs, wasting away in cigarette smoke, kicking back on the couch with a big bag of crisps and stealing merchandise from her companies’ own stores. It is only when Daniel’s golden retriever, Whisky, dies of old age, that she finally breaks, drunkenly crashing her car into a concrete barricade.
But after waking up from her near brush with death, May finds that she is being followed by the spirit of Ken (Sean Lau)—an old elementary school classmate—and has gained the ability to see wandering apparitions through her left eye. From start to finish, To and Wai feed viewers with an unending supply of random afterlife gags, including slapstick chopstick exorcisms, a possessed eating binge, and a Kamen Rider-inspired ghost call. Yet, My Left Eye also has no shortage of tender moments, showcasing desolate characters grappling with overwhelming grief. Cheng, the comedic and dramatic core of the film, masterfully glides between emotionally detached daughter-in-law and lonesome lover. The Cantopop star’s elegance and vulnerability seeps through in key moments, elevating May’s character beyond a two-dimensional source of comic relief.
Despite its often low-brow humor, the film perfectly fits into To’s broader cinematic exploration of karmic exchanges and fateful encounters. Like in Running on Karma (2003), a film about a warrior-monk-turned-stripper who can see people’s past lives, ancient superstitions coexist with the hyper-globalized present here as well. This emphasis on the afterlife highlights the impermanence of a present moment and To displays an atavistic desire toward looking at the past as a means of dealing with increasingly unpredictable futures. By seamlessly juggling horror-inflected Mo Lei Tau-style comedy, a tragic romance, and a philosophical drama on death, To and Wai conjure a perfect reflection of the multifaceted and transnational essence that defines modern Hong Kong cinema.
My Left Eyes Sees Ghosts screens this afternoon, October 3, at the Museum of Modern Art on 35mm as part of “Chaos and Order: The Way of Johnnie To.”
