Abstract
The 1999 Hong Kong International Film Festival hailed the One stormy night, Judy is mending the leaking roof helter-skelter, watched by her son who occasionally points out other leaks. Suddenly, they see a taxi stopping abruptly nearby. A man gets out of it, yelling and kicking at a door of the taxi. The taxi driver is furious. He comes out of the car and hits the man with a stick. Another taxi driver comes to the first driver's assistance but both are defeated. The son, while watching the fight, is urged by the mother not to watch it anymore. But fate has them involved in the man's life. The man, Michael, an ex-gang leader, has just been released from jail. He settles in the woman's place, the International Inn, a humble inn not deserving the name "international", which is going to be confiscated due to the large sum of a loan the woman, a widow, is not able to clear. And there begins an unusual love story which elaborates the concept of a Chinese "home" and the "grand narratives" that underlie it. When the story begins, Judy is no ordinary woman. Not at all like a career woman nowadays, yet as a widow, she is hard pressed by life to manage the entire inn (which is also her home where she lives with her son and a maid) herself, though the business is slowly going bankrupt. She is tough and strong-minded, bearing all the burden of raising a family and the Chinese ethics that govern the society in which she lives. When she is summoned to bear witness to what has happened during that rainy night, out of righteousness, she tells the truth that it was the two taxi-drivers that started the fight, indicating Michael's involvement was only self-defence, ignoring the policeman's hint that she should tell otherwise. Such a strong female character however, is not acceptable in a patriarchal world. This can be evidenced by analysing the concept of "home" held by the mobster Michael, a concept that has traditionally been supported by the male social-order Chinese society, which relegates women to silence, subordination, as weak and vulnerable characters who only serve the satisfaction and desire of men. On the other hand, though Michael is of the dominant sex in the patriarchal world, he is also an outsider of the orderly world. He is violent, and his deeds are always destructive to the harmony and orderliness of the community. By extension, he is also the "other" of the society. And from the changing conceptualisation of what a "home" is like, Michael is, like Judy, finally contained in the orderly world.
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