Season 6, Ep. 4: An Autumn's Tale

This week's Saturday School is about the 1987 Mabel Cheung-directed film "An Autumn's Tale," starring Chow Yun-fat and Cherie Chung. We revisit a period in the '80s after the British have made a deal to hand over Hong Kong to China in 1997, there is a fear of of losing freedoms, a wave of emigration and a curiosity about what it'd be like to be an overseas Chinese. "An Autumn's Tale" is about Hong Kong woman named Jennifer who follows her boyfriend to New York to study, only to learn that he's found a more "liberal minded" Chinese American woman and thinks she should broaden her horizons. Her family has arranged for her to stay with someone who's a rumored to be a stand-up guy, the leader of the community, and it turns out it's Chow Yun-fat, a rambuctious working-class drinker and gambler with a soft side. Many Hong Kong films set in America at this time are martial arts action movies depicting it as the wild, wild West. "An Autumn's Tale" also shows New York's Chinatown as a grimy, slightly dangerous place, but one with the possibility of romance, especially if there's a handy fellow immigrant around to help you navigate it.