Starring: Simon Yam Tat-wah, Zhang Jingchu, Jacqueline Law Wai-kuen
Director: Ann Hui On-wah
Category: IIB (Cantonese and Sichuanese)
A distillation of compelling issues that only fitfully becomes compelling cinema, director Ann Hui On-wah's companion piece to last year's The Way We Are employs too heavy a hand in making its important points.
Set in the blighted satellite town of Tin Shui Wai, Hui takes an approach that's in stark contrast to her previous work's focus on the minutiae of a relatively placid household. The travails of unemployed alcoholic Lee Sum (Simon Yam, in an image-shattering performance) and his much younger mainland wife Ling (a heartfelt portrayal by Zhang Jingchu, left) are anything but placid, containing enough turmoil for three features. It's not that the script by Cheung King-wai and Alex Law Kai-yui isn't true to its subject, rather that the drama - based on a real-life tragedy - becomes so overwrought as to give the realism a theatricality that undermines its effectiveness.
The narrative is related via a series of flashbacks, so that within 10 minutes the audience knows exactly where matters are headed. The screenplay piles so many perturbations upon Ling that the audience becomes numbed rather than involved. Ling contends with caring for twin daughters in an atmosphere poisoned by spousal abuse and the indifference of the police, politicians and social workers. There is no question of the verity behind Ling's plight, exacerbated by government policies that discriminate against recent mainland immigrants even when married to Hong Kong citizens. The filmmaker makes such a strong case that it is unnecessary to go into overdrive, as in a tawdry vignette involving Ling's husband and her sister.