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As he prepares to make his first English-language film, Johnnie To is in no mood to compromise.

Read our other features:
Final Cut: Who decides what you see?
Wong Chun-chun: The accidental feminist
Wong Jing: The crowd pleaser
Herman Yau: The cult director
Pang Ho-cheung: The enfant terrible

Johnnie To sits before me, concentrating intently on the job at hand while I scan the collection of antique cameras scattered around the room. We’re sitting in his impressively spacious office – situated inside the capacious Milkyway Building, which houses the offices and staff of his film production company, Milkyway Image – and To is performing a Gungfu tea ceremony with consummate skill. I’m just pondering how to break the silence hanging over us when, finally, he looks up, offers me a cup and speaks. “Let’s have some tea,” he says.

The man behind such lauded and hip crime flicks as The Mission, PTU, and Mad Detective, as well as recent whimsical pickpocket drama Sparrow, seems relaxed. And why shouldn’t he: Milkyway, the company he set up in 1996 with frequent collaborator Wai Ka-fai, has built a sterling reputation over the past decade, and To is about to introduce himself to a wider audience with a star-studded English-language remake of 1970 French classic Le Cercle Rouge.

That To is now considered a bona-fide Hong Kong auteur is an indication of how far he has come from the early days of his career, when he presided over a chameleonic body of works ranging from silly comedies (The Eighth Happiness and Justice, My Foot!) to comically OTT action flicks (The Heroic Trio 1 and 2). Milkyway, however, has provided the platform for To to establish the hyper-stylized cinematic style that has become his trademark. In particular, it made possible the abrupt turn he took after his 1995 drama Loving You.

“Before I turned 40,” says To, “I started to ask myself: do I really just want to continue being a technician? An operator? Or just a businessman? Then in 1995, I made up my mind that I really wanted to become a film director in the long term, making films that are decided by me and me alone – not the cast, nor the investors, nor the market. I have my very personal way of thinking, Johnnie To style.”

To’s belated auteurism has not gone unnoticed on the big stage: the director has made frequent appearances in all the major European film festivals in the last few years. Indeed, in the past year or so, To hit each of the big three, with Triangle in Cannes, Mad Detective in Venice and Sparrow in Berlin. With such international exposure, it is perhaps unsurprising that To’s next project should be his first English-language film, the forthcoming American-produced, Hong Kong- and French-funded remake of French director Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge.

Melville’s obsession with cool assassins and the underworld’s code of honour bears more than a passing resemblance to To’s usual motifs. But, as To reveals, the root goes much deeper: “I started watching European films in my early youth, and they’ve been exerting influences on me ever since. As I don’t always realise those influences, sometimes I even think that I created it by myself!

“Melville is really my type of director, although Akira Kurosawa has to be my personal favourite – I’ve always been fascinated by the static world in his films, populated by characters each bearing his own baggage. Kurosawa and Melville are the biggest influences on my filmmaking.”

With a provisional cast that includes Orlando Bloom, Chow Yun-fat, Tim Roth, Liam Neeson and Lau Ching-wan (though not the hotly rumoured Alain Delon, star of the original, whom To approached for a different project), the new film could be an ordeal for a director known for his reluctance to get acquainted with new actors.

“When you’re using new actors, you have to accept that they have their own values,” says To. “These guys are stars. They want themselves to look really cool in the movie, and they won’t care what the director is like… of course they want the director to make a good film, but at the end, what matters are their own performances. So if this project is to go ahead, I’ll have to accept a very American way of thinking.” To starts laughing. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it.”

He may be taking his newest step on the international stage, but To has no plans to relocate. Indeed, he intends to shoot the film in the same city that has provided the backdrop to his other works. “The original script was set in France and UK, but I don’t want to shoot the film there,” he confesses. “I want the film to be made in Hong Kong, because I want to continue making films in Hong Kong. I like this place very much.”

That said, does To feel his films are better appreciated elsewhere? After all, his internationally recognised films are not even among his own highest grossing movies locally.

“It’s bloody obvious!” To chuckles. “You get standing ovations that last several minutes in those film festivals, whereas the Hong Kong audience just can’t wait to leave the theatre when the credits start to roll! People here are not that interested in things that are not instantly rewarding. They play video games and surf the net, but are reluctant to use their brains. They look for films that proceed with high speed and don’t require you to think. In the heyday of the local film business, cinemas used to increase the frame rate just to accommodate seven or eight screenings a day. It looked extremely unnatural, but the audience had no complaints.”

However, To insists such mass audience tastes will not alter the course he has chosen. “As my experience with cinema increases, I realise that I’m getting further away from box office success. But then I think, even though you can’t get the biggest reward in the box office, at least you can attract a certain audience. I’m more attracted by auteur theory.”

Edmund Lee

Read our other features:
Final Cut: Who decides what you see?
Wong Chun-chun: The accidental feminist
Wong Jing: The crowd pleaser
Herman Yau: The cult director
Pang Ho-cheung: The enfant terrible