A precursor of Wong Kar-wai, his early films starred Chow Yun-fat: meet Tony Au, the Hong Kong director you haven’t heard of but should know about

In stylistic terms, Tony Au’s films were a precursor of Wong Kar-wai’s movies of the 1990s; his first two featured actor Chow Yun-fat before he was famous

Au is thought of as a director mainly of romantic dramas; one of his best works is a lush period romance set in a brothel – and features Jet Li’s future wife

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Chow Yun-fat in a still from Tony Au’s 1983 film “Last Affair”. Au was one of the great filmmakers working in Hong Kong in the 1980s and early 1990s, former Variety critic Derek Elley tells the Post.

Published: 4:15am, 4 Jun 2023

There were so many films made in Hong Kong between the 1960s and the early 1990s that some filmmakers escaped the recognition they deserved.

Tony Au Ting-ping is one of them, says former Variety critic Derek Elley, host of the Sino-Cinema website.

Au manifested a distinctive directorial style in films like Profiles of Pleasure (1988) and The Christ of Nanjing (1995), and also – unusually – doubled as an art director for filmmakers such as Ann Hui On-wah and Stanley Kwan Kam-pang.

Elley explains to the Post why Au’s films are ripe for rediscovery.

Tony Au (left), his wife, Teresa Mo (second from right), and their two daughters, pictured in 2021. Photo: Instagram/@moje115

Not many people outside Hong Kong have heard of Tony Au. What should they know about him?

Au is almost totally unknown outside Hong Kong and there is almost nothing written about him as a filmmaker. It’s a crying shame, as he’s one of the great filmmakers of Hong Kong cinema during its final Golden Age of the 1980s and first half of the 1990s.

SCMP Series

Classic Hong Kong cinema

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