Love Will Tear Us Apart Q&A Session

"It's not about the relationship between a man and a woman, but about relationships between people. How should we engage with someone? How should we carry the burden of humanity, a burden that includes ourselves?" I made this film as a way to ask these questions." The film in question is a sad and lonely one, but this was director Yu Lik-wai's answer, one given as if meditating on the meaning of each word, when asked his own thoughts on the film. Yu has a stellar record as a director of photography, but this is his first film as a director. In cases like this, the heart of the drama is often hidden in busy visuals, but characters are almost surprisingly well-fleshed-out in Yu's film. "There was no ad-libbing; it all went exactly according to the script. We had 18 days to shoot, so we didn't have the time to spend on rehearsals and discussions with the actors." Set in post-Handover Hong Kong, the film depicts people on the bottom rungs of life who face despair and disillusionment yet cannot escape their lives. Their feelings become more and more oppressed. "People in Hong Kong get their water and their foot from the Mainland, but in their hearts they want to get rid of Mainlanders. They don't know how to secure their own position." Make no mistake, Yu knows the city and its people to the core, and will continue to turn out excellent films as a director. Today's Q&A session left exactly this impression on this reporter. Director's Profile: Born in Hong Kong in 1966. Studied abroad at Belgium's Institut National Superieur des Arts de Spectacle. Upon returning home, shot and directed the documentary Neon Goddesses (1996�j. Awarded the Documentary Grand Prix at the 1996 Hong Kong Independent Short Film and Video Awards and the "We Love Cinema" prize at the Yamagata International Documentary Festival '97. Active also as a director of photography, with credits including such works as Jia Zhang-ke's Xiao Wu and Ann Hui's Ordinary Heroes.