Members Only ★½

GUESS what? The Chinese can make awful films too.

Exhibit A: Members Only (2017), one of the weakest directorial debuts I have seen in a long time.

It’s not entirely Mic-go Ngan’s fault, but I can’t find anyone else to blame because the IMDB entry doesn’t list a writer.

Maybe that’s because it didn’t have a script and the actors were just instructed to say anything, as long as they included a financial, stock market- kind of term in every sentence.

It’s a perfectly reasonable conclusion considering the evidence. Some characters just emerge from little or no back-story, utter a heap of generally incoherent dialogue for a while and then disappear without having made any imprint on the story; others do have a character arc, but trying to follow their progression is impossible because every scene is so mired in financial gobbledegook.

And let’s not forget the sex scenes, some of the most un-erotic ever put on celluloid. Does anyone think depicting sex is always better with clothing on? Or watching somebody lick a bathroom wall in slow-motion with their extended tongue gliding across the grout is an arousing image?

So we’re presented with a drama set against stock-trading by a bunch of bored rich young people and the assortment of hangers-on and escorts at some kind of exclusive club that are less interesting than a suburban pub on a Tuesday night.

The acting is amateur at best but made to look much worse by the thoroughly confusing script.

After saying all that, I’m giving the film one-and-a-half stars because it actually looks much better than it should with some nice photography of the Hong Kong skyline when it does get out into the streets.