Sometime around midnight, on one evening of a late, rainy April. I’m walking through the narrow streets of Udine, an (obviously) picturesque hamlet in northern Italy, home to Far East Film Festival, one of the biggest events in Europe dedicated to Asian cinema. The rain has just stopped and the late night has brought in a discreet euphoria, along with the sluggishness that follows a long day filled with four films and a couple of panels. 

I’m getting back to the hotel with some of my colleagues on the FEFF Campus, the festival’s young critics workshop, and our coordinator. At one point, another small group of people crosses our path. Amongst them, a man – it’d be too early to call him old – waves at us as he’s nonchalantly puffing on a cigar. It’s late, I’m tired, so I wave back, but more out of reflex. We move on.

Takes me about five minutes to realise it. Wait a minute, that was Johnnie To.

Johnnie To isn’t someone you’d expect to casually run into on the street. To is a full-fledged legend of Hong Kong cinema, closer to a rockstar than to just a filmmaker. When he sat on the Jury of the Berlin Film Festival a couple of months ago, he was surrounded by a security detail fit for a high-ranking state official. Still, To is worthy of his fame: it’s hard to quantify what he, together with his production company, Milkyway Image, have meant, and still mean to the cinema of Hong Kong. Many would say that To is one of the filmmakers that has helped local cinema stay afloat across the crises (aesthetic and otherwise) that it has been facing since the beginning of the 2000s. In fact, the global cinematic landscape at the turn of the millennium would have looked completely different without To.

Together with some other directors well-received in the West, such as Tsui Hark and John Woo, Johnnie To is one of the grand titans of that particular slice within the Hong Kong pantheon that lies at the intersection of genre film and auteur cinema. But To is much more discreet than Hark, and more tempered than Woo – To is a director of tension, of perfectly-composed shots where the camera glides in anticipation, he’s the director of that brand action filmmaking where the meditative moment before pressing the trigger might matter much more than the following one. Or – should we go by a film such as PTU (2003), where the premise involves a lost handgun – if I may, To is the master of the action film where, although they exist in abundance and are wantonly used, it’s not the weapons that are the main spectacle, but rather, it’s the way that the characters act around them. 

Still, however easy it might be to find a red thread that would pull together his stories of gangsters, lawmen, or various groups of criminals that are more or less petty, such a definition runs the risk of painting a reductive portrait of Johnnie To. With more than fifty films under his belt, he’s a versatile director, shifting gracefully between genres, without giving off the impression that he’s unfamiliar or unsuited to any. 

A more unusual facet of To was also the focus of the retrospective that the Far East Film Festival dedicated to him this year, reuniting some of his films that are slightly closer to conventional dramas or day-to-day topics. Three films were screened: Sparrow (2008), a love story and a tale of skillful pickpockets, Life Without Principle (2011), a fable about greed and the 2008 economic crisis, and Office (2015), a comedic musical about the twists, turns and anxieties of office life.

And along with the retrospective came what felt like the chance of my life as a critic, so far – that of interviewing Johnnie To.

Rockstar, legend, titan – all of these terms are indeed quite charged, but, to me, they’re also coming out from the heart of a teenager who, growing up and becoming increasingly enamored with Hong Kong cinema, had put Johnnie To somewhere very highly in a personal pantheon. But my admiration towards him was never a blind one – whoever appreciates To knows all too well there’s a bit of a character to expect. To is not necessarily a director that is fussy or difficult, but he is a man in control. Just like his films are often affected by razor-sharp humor, To is also a bit of a witty joker during interviews. A “you have to keep your guard up” kind of situation. I  knew that with To there’s always a little game to play, and that was also the case in our short interview.

I’d put my name on an interview list, somewhere beneath twenty others, from the very beginning of the festival. Since the time was little and the people many, and I knew that some of them would benefit from being more senior critics, I had already made peace with the idea that it was likely for my interview to never even happen. Even so, like an honest and diligent critic, I prepared some questions, hoping for a roundtable where I could slip in maybe just one single question. Two rounds of interviews had been prepared, in two different days. I didn’t make it to the first round, but things were looking more promising for the second one, scheduled to take place towards the end of the festival. On the day, I showed up as if I were about to gamble: come what may. I thought, hey, the interview room at FEFF is open and friendly, and so even if I don’t end up making the interview, at least there’s a chance to hear whatever interesting things To is telling the other journalists.

*

Here we all are, two hours later, and Johnnie To still hasn’t shown up. We joke that this is some kind of a test, that he wants to see what’s the breaking point of these crazy and subservient fans that are waiting for him. True enough, many people get up and leave, angrily – maybe if it would have been any other director, I would’ve done the same thing. Three hours pass and we also get a bit cheeky: there are only three of us left, and we’re taking bets on whether he’s in a good mood or not. When we least expect it, there’s suddenly some fanfare: “He’s downstairs having a cigar, get ready”.

Johnnie To steps into the room and he seems to be in a good mood indeed. He’s enjoying Udine. In fact, throughout the festival’s 25-year history, he’s had his films screened here almost ten times. Udine is a place close to his heart. He’s extremely relaxed. He’s wearing a cap with what looks like the emblem of a football team – I’d venture to guess it’s FC Barcelona but I frankly haven’t the faintest idea.

We don’t have much time, Johnnie To already has to be in five other places. Our allotted time goes through a round of negotiations: the senior critic gets a one-on-one interview, while my Campus colleague and I agree to share 20 minutes with him, tops.

With a director of To’s stature I was expecting a bit of a formal “you are you, and I am me” type of relationship, especially since it was clear on my and my colleague’s faces that we’re hardly older than 25. To my surprise, though, To invites me to take a seat next to him, on the same couch. He asks me where I’m from. I say that I’m Romanian, he understands Armenian. Sure, whatever, I could be from Armenia for Johnnie To. Actually, I’m thinking, it might be better if he doesn’t know that I’m from Romania, who knows what kind of fiery arguments happened between him and Radu Jude during the jury discussions at the Berlinale (knowing what kind of cinema he appreciates, something tells me that To wasn’t exactly brimming with joy to offer the Golden Bear to a documentary film).

I wait for my turn, letting my British colleague go first (To was excited to hear where he’s from), in the hopes that my anxiousness will fade away in the meantime. I had prepared a couple of questions for To that were rather – or so I’d thought – uncomfortable, because he’d already answered some of my general curiosities in the previous days, during the masterclass that he gave during the festival.

“When I finish the film, that’s when I finish the screenplay”, says To about his working method, admitting that, in the case of Office, the circumstances were quite unusual, given that the script penned by actress Sylvia Chang, yet another iconic figure of Chinese-language cinema, already existed. “With Office, I wanted to explore something other than ‘gun-shoot’ and ‘gangster’ themes, I took the project on as an experiment”, reflects the director upon his decision to shoot this savory musical.

Talking about his way of working with actors, To said that he doesn’t leave much space for improvisation: “I always know what the scene is about, I have a specific idea, and the actors have to follow my instructions. There’s not much room for improvisation. [But it’s not the aesthetic principle that guides me], it all depends on the drama and what the scene is about – the story comes first. And after that there comes the aesthetic or the lens work.”

When asked which of his own films he ranks as his favorite, To gives a modest answer. “I like every one of my films. But I am still learning how to make films. It’s still a process. When I see the real film masters I feel like I still have a lot to do, and I’m still trying to make my favourite film. If you really insist on asking me which is my favourite from what I’ve done so far, it would be Throw Down (2004).”

He does, however, expand on his motivations during our interview, prompted by my colleague. He feels that Throw Down is his most personal film, made after the SARS epidemic in 2003, which saw the entirety of Hong Kong, including To, go through a lot of suffering. “Every scene came naturally from my heart” To says, underlining that although intuition plays an important role in many of his productions, Throw Down is the most intuitive of them all.

Inevitably, during the masterclass, To also commented on the question that all of us were wondering about – what is the future of Hong Kong cinema? Initially, the answer came under the shape of a parable, allowing us to be the ones to draw the conclusions and connections, should we want to venture into it. Talking about Sparrow, To brought attention to the fact that the film contains shots of several historical buildings and places in Hong Kong that have disappeared in the meantime. “When I was shooting Sparrow, Queen’s Pier was being demolished, and it was understandable that people were protesting against it, because the place is part of our collective memory and of Hong Kong heritage.” The pickpockets in Sparrow, too, are a disappearing profession in Hong Kong, the director says. “It is hard to talk about preservation of heritage in Hong Kong right now, because a lot of buildings are being demolished everyday and the government can kind of do whatever they want. Change is a normal process. However, is it necessary or is it too fast? […] If I have a chance to talk about the preservation of Hong Kong in my films again, I would like to remind people to respect Hong Kong the city.” A question from the audience comes up – “Will Cantonese-language cinema survive?” Johnnie To says that he hopes so, but that he doesn’t know.

“I feel that in the films that are produced nowadays in Hong Kong I cannot see the same variety of genre and styles as there used to be in the 80s.”, To says during the masterclass. Even he is feeling a bit stuck, and is trying to rediscover the freedom that he used to allow himself to indulge in, he tells my colleague. “I think, at the end, the most important thing is to give opportunities to young filmmakers, […] in a context where, because big and important movies have moved to China, [it’s hard for them to see how their projects will come to life]. […] For now, I don’t see someone [to stand out] yet, but as long as we give them opportunities, someone will come.”

*

My turn comes up. There are many things that I could ask To – and I’m still mulling over the thought that I could’ve asked something else, something more valuable. But I’m fascinated by To’s presence here, at the festival – not as an idol that I’m meeting for the first time in my life, but as a surprisingly easy-going person. I wonder if it’s only just the gap between the well-meaning person that is sitting in front of us now and the combative presence that stuck with me after the Berlinale press conference, when he commented on freedom and cinema, underlining that cinema is the first to suffer at the hands of totalitarian regimes. 

So I start off with this curiosity. Is the To in front of my eyes different from the one from a couple of months ago?

Do you enjoy this, let’s say, anonymity that you can get in Udine? I mean, of course, people obviously know who you are. But do you feel in any way reconnected to people you’d otherwise not be able to connect with – just because you’re an extremely famous director?

“I feel it’s pretty much the same for me if I go to big festivals or small festivals. It depends more on the audience, when they see a film, what do they look for in the film. So it is not about big or small festivals, when I make a film it’s about if people like it or not, I hope that what I make is appreciated by the audience. When I think of the European audience, when I think of what they search for in my films, they probably search for the action scenes, the design of these action scenes, the style of a film noir. And this is the most obvious connection I have with the European audience. If my films can be enjoyable and keep people excited it may be because they are character driven. That’s what creates a connection between me and the audience.”

Johnnie To waits for the translator to finish, and then asks: “Do you feel fulfilled with that answer?”. Nobody ever asked me anything close to this during an interview. He doesn’t say it in a harsh or critical tone. And well, to be honest, actually no, I am not satisfied with To’s answer.

What I was curious about was whether having close contact with people in small cinema halls or on the streets makes you feel different. As opposed to Berlinale, for example, where the jury is mostly kept away from the audience. 

“I have always loved big cinema. And that’s what cinema is supposed to be. A big space. However, with the new generation, and with the rise of the Internet, everyone is more used to watching films on TV or on small screens in general. So they don’t care if the cinema is big or small. But of course, if the cinema is big but empty, it’s depressing. And to see a small cinema being small but full, [as in Udine], is much warmer. The energy that creates can connect people and is really pleasant. 

Unfortunately, in Hong Kong there are no more big cinemas, because it’s a city with no space, and [there’s no more space] for big screens either.

But about barriers, and the distance between me and the audience. In bigger festivals, you know, it’s a necessity to have bodyguards so that they can keep things under control. [It’s just necessary]. In Udine, because it’s smaller, there are indeed not many barriers, so that makes it all depend on a kind of discipline coming from the public. It’s difficult for big festivals to appeal to that, they are forced to put up barriers. Of course, with the more intimate setting, though, it is easier to connect and have contact with the audience.”

My final question is more of a naughty curiosity.

I know this will sound like an inappropriate question, but this is something that I would like to ask you as the director of Heroic Trio (1993). Hollywood keeps looking at Hong Kong cinema, sometimes it’s been borrowing a lot from it, and recently there was a phenomenon like Everything Everywhere All At Once. And I think a lot of us who love Hong Kong cinema, who know Michelle Yeoh from other – better – films were saying, “oh if only you had all watched a Hong Kong film before”. I was curious if you see this phenomenon in any way favourably, or if it just further proves what you’ve often been saying recently, that a lot of recent cinema has just been very bad.

“Listen, I don’t know why this film can get any awards. No idea. I can’t accept that. I’m of course happy for Michelle, who got an Oscar, because she is an old friend. But sometimes I think in Hollywood they do things with a hidden agenda, and not necessarily for the sake of the movie or for the sake of cinema. I can’t explain why they do certain things, or I don’t even need to explain why they do certain things, they just do whatever they want. And this film is not really a film for me.”

My last intervention is a bit cheeky, sensing that this will have to be my closing line.

Now I can sleep much better at night knowing me and Johnnie To hate the same film. 

Bemused, Johnnie To switches to English, for the first time throughout our entire interview.

“It’s ridiculous! Ridiculous.”

We say goodbye to each other. Everybody is giggling.

I’m also laughing, but there’s a pit I’m feeling in my stomach. I’m already afraid that I wasn’t aware of just how big this chance was. Did I waste my questions? Couldn’t I have asked To about anything else? But what is there left to ask him? So much has been written about him, he’s given so many interviews, it’s hard to try to get something out of him that he has never said before. And, then, you can’t really touch on the more difficult topics when you only have twenty minutes, that are also shared with someone else. Were there enough space, I would have been interested in asking him to come back to the topic of freedom and cinema. Or, as I was mentioning earlier about my suspicions with regards to the subject, I would have been interested to get his opinion on documentary filmmaking. In the end, I tell myself, some other time. This interview somehow happened now, so, who knows, maybe there will be a second time, just as unexpected as this one.

To puts his cap back on. I’ve lost the bet: Johnnie To was in a good mood today – but now I can finally sleep better at night.

Dora Leu

Graduated with a BA in film directing and a MA in film studies from UNATC; she's also studied history of art. Also collaborates with the Acoperisul de Sticla film magazine and is a former coordinator of FILM MENU. She's dedicated herself to '60-'70s Japanese cinema and Irish post-punk music bands. Still keeps a picture of Leslie Cheung in her wallet.