23rd New York Asian Film Festival

July 12-28, 2024

Photo: Courtesy of Lionsgate

Spotlight on 852 Films

Habit (International Version)

Picture this: you're wandering through a surreal, cine-literate Los Angeles, where the lines between reality and fantasy blur like a watercolor painting in the rain. That's the universe of Habit, a wild, unclassifiable debut feature from director Janell Shirtcliff that will leave you exhilarated and dumbfounded. Edited by the legendary William Chang Suk-ping, who's worked his magic on Wong Kar-wai's films, Habit follows a ragtag group of young emigrants led by Mads (Bella Thorne) and their wild shenanigans in a bizarre underworld of soft-spoken drug dealers and hitmen with Southern drawls. Thorne's church-girl-gone-bad performance anchors the insanity, while Josie Ho's unforgettable portrayal of the maniacal drug lord Queenie is a dark mirror that reflects the film's twisted soul. What you get here is a work of unsullied camp that revels in its own paradoxes and the lurid fantasy of B-movies, finding emotional truth within the confines of pastiche, in a narrative probably best described as the frenzied momentum of a drug deal gone horribly, beautifully wrong.

Director: Janell Shirtcliff
Producer: Conroy Chan
Cast: Bella Thorne, Gavin Rossdale, Andreja Pejic, Josie Ho
Languages: English
2021; 81 min.

SCHEDULE:

Tuesday July 16, 8:45pm
Film at Lincoln Center

Intro and Q&A with Josie Ho

Josie Ho

Award-winning actress, producer, rock star and Hong Kong culture icon Josie Ho first graced the silver screen in 1994 and has appeared in such notable films as Exiled (2006), The Drummer (2007), Dream Home (2010), and Full Strike (2015), which she also produced. Ho received a Best Supporting Actress award for Naked Ambition in 2003 at the Hong Kong Film Awards and In the Room in 2017 at the Malaysian Film Awards. In 2009, she along with husband Conroy Chan and producer Andre Ooi founded the production company 852 Films. Recent works include Edge of the World, Habit and Onpaku.