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Wong Ping (director), Sorry for the Late Reply, 2021. 15 min.

“If you’ve ever stepped into the supernatural world during a hike, or have gotten lost in the parking lot and couldn’t find the exit, or have stared into the eyes of a black chicken standing outside your door through the peephole late at night. Then you would know how I feel.”
—from Wong Ping’s Sorry for the Late Reply, 2021.

Art Basel Hong Kong 2024 presents a 15-minute animation Sorry for the Late Reply (2021), titled after Wong Ping’s email to Gary Carrion. The narrative extends associations from personal stories and diaries to single-channel animated films that delve into the aspirations and anxieties of urban dwellers. Sorry for the Late Reply tells the story of an unnamed narrator’s nightmare of being trapped in a vein in the store manager’s leg and then struggling to escape.

To put it bluntly, it’s about a lonely urban man seeking freedom by obsessing over varicose veins on a woman’s calf to release stress. One of his monologues narrates, “I am trapped in a woman’s calf, and the Wi-Fi signal is weak inside. I’ve already given you the reason for the late reply. But I know you won’t believe me because you only think of yourself.” By sharing a series of intimate narratives and focusing on exploring sexual fetishes and voyeurism, Wong Ping draws you closer, making you complicit in his endeavours. You think of yourself, the unseen sexual fetishes, and the peephole view. You also think of Quentin Tarantino’s foot fetish, and Hitchcock makes you accomplices in James Stewart’s voyeurism in Rear Window and Vertigo.

Sexual fetishes and voyeurism are complex themes in cinema because they can be interpreted in so many ways. Human lives and behaviours are far more nuanced and emotive than any psychiatric diagnostic system or symptom checklist can ever indicate. Movies do not aim to perfect depictions of reality, they often present themes in relatable, enriching, usefully challenging, and thought-provoking ways. When thoughts that transcend the moral boundaries of reality are created, there is a feeling of natural pleasure.

This sense of pleasure is reinforced by the visual aspect of the movie. The pastel and neon colours of the film create a beautiful and unique style. The animation aesthetics, with its unrestrained use of intense colours and rich forms, seems to be a departure from the norm that is not often seen in Hong Kong cinema. Provocative and funny, it brings out the absurdity of Hong Kong: plagued by loneliness, frustration, and lust. A cold tone narrates such an emotionally charged vision. Its restrained aloof tone adds a distinctly autobiographical voice to the animation. The male voice describes the scenes and mental activities in the images in great detail, telling the story in its entirety and with horrifying frankness, sometimes talking directly to the viewer—as if he were talking to another patient or a voyeur. It is a restrained and determined literary practice, whose narrative structure always gives the illusion of an autobiographical genre, often challenging the audience as well as the artist himself with aggressive gestures. When image and narration are combined in two extreme forms, the film becomes a vehicle for the expression of complex ideas, allowing it to present its thoughts on sexuality, politics, and contemporary society’s absurd response to an increasingly chaotic contemporary world that is difficult to rationalise.

Urbanites need physical excitement, inspiration, and stimulation from their surroundings, which the internet cannot provide. More and more, contemporary film-making is a practice of stepping on the yellow line, constantly provoking, pushing, and testing the limits. In a film-making world where the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred in the most unexpected ways.

I now understand the feelings described by Wong Ping, when I was lost in varicose veins, when I was invited by the supernatural world to enter, and once again returned to reality, I could only watch the blank email on the computer screen, lightly type down, subject: Sorry for the Late Reply.

How to cite: Chen, Octavia. “Seeking Freedom in the Midst of Sexual Fetishes and Voyeurism: Wong Ping’s Sorry for the Late Reply.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 17 Apr. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/04/17/late-reply.

Octavia Chen is a writer and filmmaker based in Hong Kong. Her short films were selected in several film festivals such as the 2020 Global Short Film Awards Cannes and won the Humanitarian Award from AFI Cannes. She had a master’s in Directing from the School of Visual Arts in New York and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Hong Kong. Visit her website for more information.

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