Review: Spacked Out

At the turn of the century, as the British left Hong Kong, action movie director Lawrence Ah Mon released the young, gay, and grimy Spacked Out. A kitschy, high saturation film that follows a group of friends––Cookie, Banana, Bean Curd, and Sissy–as they skip school, kiss each other, get high, bootleg movies, and dabble in classroom sex work. In the background, the isolated terrain of Tuen Mun, a mismanaged urban development in the suburbs of Hong Kong, wastes away. The lost friends wade through cycles of hope and despair: Cookie strikes out on her own to find an abortionist while her friends-turned-lesbian-lovers Sissy and Bean Curd just can’t seem to get sex right. Ah Mon gives us a melancholic colonial hangover through the eyes of shiny and confused teenage city girls. Watch it on Mubi or if you’re in New York City, catch a screening on June 26th at Dear Friend Books in Bed-Stuy. I’ll be there with my boo! ––Jahnavi Mehta