Go-wing is at a loss with her life – expected by her father to become a successful lawyer, she spends most of her days at his takeaway in a tiny village in Yorkshire, feeling left out by her friends and uninterested in her studies. That is, until she delivers an order to the local circus, who have set up camp nearby – suddenly, she has a new purpose: to skate on top of the high wire. All while helping out her father and passing her exams, of course. Sweet and quirky, High Wire is a genuinely enchanting fairytale of a film, about the power of hard work and truly believing in something. Nevertheless, it also deftly addresses the struggles of the British Chinese community, and the importance of family, regardless of blood relation. What About Birdy sat down with director Calif Chong to talk about the joys of the circus, familial expectations and writing a comedy for the British Chinese community.
WAB: High Wire is a coming-of-age story in many ways – it’s deeply funny, but there are also a lot of important topics explored, with a particular focus on racism in the UK. How do you balance social commentary and comedy?
CC: It’s not an easy question to pin down. I wrote the script with Jackie [Lam] and when you’re a writer, it’s easy to have too much content. You write everything you feel in the moment. Then you shoot it, but it’s only when you come to the edit that you really work on the story arc, how much you want to tell, how much is too much. I don’t want to not tell enough when I have the chance to tell this story, for instance. But I remember having a conversation with my editor, who told me I needed to cut a scene, and it took me a few days to accept and digest that. It’s always better for people to tell you something isn’t working, because then you learn. Some directors cut their own films but I enjoy the process of a third voice that isn’t me, an external voice. Editing plays a big role, and it helped with the comedy. I thought about the things our parents do – those moments in the film are like self-mockery rather than criticism. But when it came to the actual racism, I had to think about my life – the racism I’ve experienced is on a surface level. It starts with a racial slur and ends with a “go home”. It’s hard to not be on the surface – but at the same time, how do you express that sense of being unwelcome?
WAB: Though the film focuses on Go-wing and her family and the British Chinese community, there are also a lot of circus performers who hail from a variety of countries. Could you tell me a little more about them?
CC: In real life, my own circus is filmmaking. It’s a separate life from my personal one, my upbringing, family, high school, education, my Hong Kong friends. They are all very separate from my job because none of them work in film. I was the only person to pursue it, especially since Hong Kong is a very practical place, because life is so expensive there. Art is not really a big industry and I’m from a working class background, so I’ve been told by many people that I’m silly to go into film, even selfish – how will I support my parents? It’s the same thing with the circus world. Go-wing enters a world she doesn’t belong to, and finds solace there, people who love the same art form. I think I’ve always been drawn to a passion that’s not money, to something that makes the world a bit more beautiful, extraordinary. If everyone was just going to a nine-to-five corporate job, everything would be so boring. And the irony is that when people have money, they want to buy art, and expensive cars, and go to concerts. Everything that people want to use money to buy is all some sort of entertainment. The circus is that love of the art, and that’s what draws Go-wing to it. Her mother is also a figure skater, which is something I’m very interested in – I’ve watched so many of Kristi Yamaguchi’s performances, who is East Asian. She is so graceful and elegant. When I first saw the circus in person, I was so blown away by the crazy human potential. They push there, and the people are so warm, so excited that people come to see them. In film, there’s a bit of snobbery around celebrity. But in the circus, all performers are equal, because they are all doing something so specific – they cannot do each other’s acts. And the circus world isn’t very commercialised, which is maybe a good thing, so they all become friends, like an actual family.
WAB: You have talked about expectations of supporting parents, which is something Go-wing must tackle in the film. No doubt the most important relationship is with her father. Could you tell me how that came about, and whether it was inspired by real life?
CC: Between a mother-daughter relationship and a father-daughter relationship, I went with the latter, I don’t know why. I think I really wanted to create a mother that was a figure skater, and for Go-wing to be inspired by her, so organically the relationship with the father came about. He is the one who drives the family, swimming from China to Hong Kong and then moving them to the UK. It was a very common story back in the 70s. It was always the man of the household who wanted to move away. I didn’t try to base it on my own life but as I was writing, of course, I would reference my parents a lot. I also read a few books, Takeaway [: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter]by Angela Hui and Sweet Mandarin [by Helen Tse], about three generations of adult women who migrated from China to England. There is always this male character who is quite stern and scary, and it’s the same for me. I had a difficult relationship with my dad, and so Mr Au ended up being a combination of all these middle-aged Asian people I know. They talk really loudly – I once asked my mum why they did, and she said that when she was growing up in China, the house was so big, you needed to shout to each other to hear each other. So it becomes a habit, even when they moved to a tiny space in Hong Kong.
WAB: Speaking of location, High Wire is set in Yorkshire. Did you pick it for a specific reason?
CC: Looking back, it was a crazy project. We were low budget, so we had to make sensible pre-production decisions. When you’re writing, you can set it anywhere though – I was originally thinking Milton Keynes, because apparently there are a lot of Chinese immigrants there. I thought it made sense. But having looked at pictures, I struggled to envision it. It was our co-producer Tippy [Watson], who lived up north at the time, who suggested we come up to hers – she had a piece of land right outside, which was big enough to build the circus tent. It’s actually small compared to the usual ones, but we still needed six trailers for it! So we walked around the whole village looking for scenes and interior. It was so beautiful, idyllic, and it was a stark contrast to my life in Hong Kong, which was very tiny and crammed. Tippy said we could even get sheep to feature – so I had all these elements to play with, and that’s how some scenes ended up being inspired by the location.
WAB: You mentioned in previous interviews that you picked Isabella [Wei] because she fit the role perfectly. She could do everything you needed her to do, speak two languages, skate, act of course. But was it always the plan to have co-writer Jackie, who plays Eddie, act in it?
CC: I invited him to. I had to convince him though. I wrote a one pager first with another filmmaker. I was asked to write about the circus, but I also really wanted to depict someone growing up in a takeaway, something for the British Chinese community. So I forcefully married the two by coming up with this story. I showed it to Jackie, who I had worked with briefly in the past, and he gave me some really good feedback. He actually suggested one of the most important scenes, and that’s when my husband [cinematographer Matthew P Scott] and I realised we needed to get him on as my co-writer, because he actually had that lived experience. Of course, this is a low budget film though, so when you invite people on board, you almost have to pitch them. So I told Jackie I would write a role for him, and created this character, Eddie, to present to him – I wrote all of his dialogue, because he didn’t want to write his own! But it worked out well. I’m grateful I had him as a collaborator on this film.
WAB: If you had any advice for low budget filmmakers who are trying to make a start, what would you say to them?
CC: Ask yourself how badly you want it. How badly do you want to make a film and most importantly, how badly do you want to be the person telling that story. I have donated my whole life to filmmaking and when I watch films, I sometimes find it hard to believe how no one has talked about a certain topic in the whole of British film history. And there isn’t a film about British Chinese people having a good time, unless you watch a low budget film on YouTube. So how can you do something better? If it’s really important to you and it’s important to you that people see it, then you have enough force to make it happen. Also, write a good script. The script is the most important thing. If that is solid, then everything else should come into place.
High Wire screened at the London Film Festival.
