Get Reel | Film review: Dot 2 Dot is a touching love letter to Hong Kong
There’s a school of thought that believes familiarity breeds contempt — or, at least, underappreciation. Then there are those who think the more you get to know something, the more you can grow to love it. Although these ideas might appear to be mutually exclusive, both are present in writer-director-producer Amos Why’s first feature film, Dot 2 Dot.
Starring: Moses Chan Ho, Meng Tingyi, Susan Shaw Yin-yin, Lam Tze-chung
Director: Amos Why
Category: I (Cantonese, Putonghua and English)
There’s a school of thought that believes familiarity breeds contempt — or, at least, underappreciation. Then there are those who think the more you get to know something, the more you can grow to love it. Although these ideas might appear to be mutually exclusive, both are present in writer-director-producer Amos Why’s first feature film, Dot 2 Dot.
An absorbing drama about two people with a knowledge and appreciation of Hong Kong’s local geography and cultural heritage, including the dot-to-dot puzzles that appeared in magazines such as Children’s Paradise, it shows that such knowledge and love is not limited to those who were born, and have spent all their lives, in the city.
Suet Chung (Moses Chan Ho), the creator of some enigmatic dot patterns on the walls of MTR stations, has returned to Hong Kong after emigrating to Canada with his family in the 1980s. Meanwhile, Xiao Xue (Meng Tingyi), a Putonghua teacher who has recently arrived from Jilin, realises these dots are more than just random markings, and resolves to work out what they mean.
Initially overwhelmed by the crowds in Hong Kong, and how fast Hongkongers walk, Xiao Xue doesn’t venture beyond the area near her language school and her flat.
