"Septet: The Story of Hong Kong" (2020) is a collection of seven short episodes, each with their own director, each focused on a story that somehow relates to Hong Kong. There is a teenage love story in 80's Hong Kong, there is a story about young people training martial arts, and there is a tale of inter-generational relations between a kung fu grandpa and his westernized granddaughter.
The cardinal sin for episode films with multiple directors is awkward unevenness and lack of cohesion. However, "Septet" does not suffer from the common shortcoming of the genre. That is because the film is very evenly terrible. What is supposed to be a heartfelt love letter to an iconic city with its own vibrant film culture is nothing but a sub-par collection of sentimental and cringe-inducing stories that ring a bell to anyone who has checked out soap operas on daytime TV or picked up a cheap joke book at the grocery store.
The premises for comedy are the likes of a grandfather denying his granddaughter western delicacies only to enjoy them himself. So funny. On the other hand, many episodes try to invoke feelings of nostalgia by simply setting up some uninteresting events in a past decade and then cutting to a later period -- oh look how time has passed. In the first episode, for one, young people are training kung fu. A voice-over narration gives a sense of reminiscence. Then the episode concludes with a cut to a brief shot of the narrator as an older person. And this is supposed to awake sentiment. Yet the director of the episode never stops at exploring what this past time meant for this character and what it might mean to him now besides nostalgia. Overall, the problem of the film is that it's difficult to feel anything when the characters and the dramatic set-ups are embarrassingly shallow.
The worst thing about "Septet" might nevertheless be that it is supposed to be an homage to Hong Kong, its cinema, the history of that cinema, and even 35 mm film. As a person who is deeply invested in the appreciation of film history, this film should be quite up my alley. Even though the martial arts cinema of Hong Kong has never been my personal cup of tea, there is plenty to love about Hong Kong cinema, and I do have a soft spot for any meditation on film history. Watching this sub-par excuse of a tribute made me wonder for a moment what I was doing at the cinema. Luckily there are better films to resuscitate my "faith," but "Septet" is definitely one of those films that makes me embarrassed to hold cinema in such high regard.
