Hollywood Hong Kong 2001

The story unfolds in Tai Hom Village, a humble Hong Kong shantytown that sits under the enormous shadow of Plaza Hollywood, a towering apartment and mall complex. The film opens with a pig butcher, Mr. Chu, and his two overweight sons, Tiny Chu and Ming Chu, whose days drift in a routine of work, meals, and quiet despair.

Another resident, Wong Chi-Keung, is haunted by an obsession with internet porn, a detail that hints at a deeper restlessness. His path crosses with Hung Hung, a Mainland Chinese prostitute who advertises online and arranges a night of sex just outside Plaza Hollywood. Hung Hung’s arrival begins a quiet invasion of the town’s already frail equilibrium, as she slowly befriends Chu’s family, especially Tiny, and operates under the alias Tong Tong.

At first, Hung Hung appears to bring a breath of fresh air into the dreary rhythms of the village, a glint of new life in a place where days feel stiff and predictable. Yet the mood sharpens after Tong Tong seduces Ming, transforming that light, almost harmless charm into something more calculating and bitter. The balance of the household begins to tilt as Tong Tong’s outward sweetness reveals a more selfish underside, and the sense of security surrounding the family starts to fracture.

Tong Tong vanishes from the town and begins sending letters to Ming and Keung claiming statutory rape, insisting that she is under sixteen. The letters are less about truth and more about coercion, a dangerous attempt to extort money to escape possible legal trouble. When Keung refuses to pay, he is pursued by gangsters, and his hand is hacked off and flung far away.

In a grim, almost absurd twist of black humor, Tiny discovers what appears to be Keung’s severed hand and a quack doctor reattaches it—only to realize the hand isn’t his at all. Enraged and desperate, Keung joins Ming, and the two grab machetes as they hurry toward Plaza Hollywood to confront Tong Tong. By the time they arrive, Tong Tong has already vanished from the town.

In a final, sorrowful cycle of despair, Keung compels Ming to cut off the hand that had been wrongly reattached. The story closes without a neat resolution—no one’s life feels truly whole—and Tong Tong is rumored to have slipped away to the “real” Hollywood, leaving the others to reckon with the tangled consequences of desire, deceit, and a community that could not save them.