Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea - Stephen Rea (1995) - Victoria Harbour

Next on the list is a mid-90's film based on a short story written by Nikos Kavvadias. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea stars Stephen Rea as Nikos, a Greek sailor who arrives in Hong Kong just as the company that owns the ship he is working on goes out of business. This leaves him and his fellow sailors stranded for a few days until they can find new jobs and move on. In the meantime a little girl is sent to the ship by her family to offer her services as a maid. The backstory to the girl (living on her wits amongst the Hong Kong boat people) feels a little before the time this movie was made - feasible in the 1960s and even 1970s but certainly a bit unbelievable for the 1990s setting of the film. Anyway, after an initial reluctance, Nikos grows fond of the girl and it forces him to rethink his life and perhaps return to his abandoned girlfriend and the child they had together.

Much of the earlier part of the film is set on the ship as it sits in the harbour, but later on the pair decide to explore the "land" together, so we get a small number of locations to include here as a result.

It looks to me as though the ship is moored somewhere to the west of Kowloon because the odd bit of skyline that can be seen is Stonecutter Island, the west end of Hong Kong Island and, in a couple of shots, the mass of floating dredging platforms that are being used to created the West Kowloon Reclamation.

Stonecutters Island on the left

West Kowloon dredgers in the background

The west end of Hong Kong Island in the distance