The reading mentions the blend of reality and surrealism in Fruit Chan’s film Made In Hong Kong, which alters the audience’s sense of reality. In the movie, he defamiliarises Hong Kong and creates a “spectral city” instead. This style differs from Fruit Chan’s other films, which usually have more elements of realism.
Moreover, the reading mentions Fruit Chan’s another ghostly city film “Finale in Blood”. In that film, “ghostly” is not all about including real spectres and ghosts. Instead, he uses “ghostly” as a transformative tool to defamiliarise the city, to give the film an uncanniness and uneasiness.
The analysis of spectre in Fruit Chan’s films does not focus on the supernaturalism, the nature of ghosts, like its visibility and its presence. He uses it as a means for defamiliarisation to challenge conventional perceptions of the urban environment, and to offer the audience new perspectives to view the city.
In the end, the reading also mentions the emotional context in Fruit Chan’s films. In Made in Hong Kong and The Longest Summer, class dimension of the ghostly city is referenced, which allows the audience to try to trace the very specific emotion back to the socio-political problem.
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