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Top five films to watch in Hong Kong this week (April 20-26), from Things to Come to Denial
A French woman’s mid-life crisis, a Japanese ex-con, the Cultural Revolution and two very different Holocaust-related stories are this week’s picks
Click on film titles to read SCMP.com reviews
By now, it’s a little boring to declare that Isabelle Huppert has given another great performance. After showing her potent side in the rape-revenge thriller Elle , the French legend reaches for the other end of her acting spectrum for this low-key and thoughtful study of a woman starting over in her 50s. (Opens on April 20)
2. Harmonium
Partly inspired by Hitchcock’s 1940 thriller Rebecca, in which the shadow of a dead woman continues to haunt the inhabitants of a house, Koji Fukada plays a similar trick with lead actor Tadanobu Asano’s elusive presence to tell a cryptic story of guilt and redemption around one Japanese family. (Now showing)
3. China Behind
Cecile Tang Shu-shuen’s little-seen 1974 masterpiece takes a vivid look at both the Cultural Revolution and the dehumanising effects of Hong Kong’s materialistic excess through the tale of five Guangzhou residents attempting to flee to the city in 1966. (April 22, part of Revisiting the New Wave programme)
4. Denial
A courtroom drama that finds unexpected relevance in this era of “alternative facts”, Mick Jackson’s dramatisation of the 1996 libel case filed by Holocaust denier David Irving against academic Deborah Lipstadt earns some extra credit from the powerful turns by Timothy Spall and Rachel Weisz. (Opens on April 20)
5. Austerlitz
If you plan to watch Denial, this simple yet thought-provoking documentary by Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa – which silently observes the behaviour of tourists at the Nazi death camps in Germany – could well make for an unconventional double bill. (April 20, part of Hong Kong International Film Festival)
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