Review | Film review: In Your Dreams – Carina Lau, Ng Siu-hin in Tam Wai-ching’s intimate feature debut
The directorial debut of screenwriter Tam Wai-ching gives Ng Siu-hin his first starring role as a moody youth who falls for his lovelorn teacher, Carina Lau; the storytelling is weak but as a mood piece it is effective and shows promise
3/5 stars
The opening round of the Hong Kong government’s First Feature Film Initiative delivered a miraculous crop in Weeds on Fire , Mad World and the soon-to-be-released Somewhere Beyond the Mist. This film, the directorial debut of emerging screenwriter Tam Wai-ching – funded under the scheme’s second round – has a harder time finding the right balance between commercialism and artistic ambition.
Carina Lau Ka-ling again plays an affluent housewife struggling with the prolonged absence of her significant other – as she did in the low-budget drama Bends (2013). The veteran actress’ character in In Your Dreams – for which she also served as producer – is lonely Yuek-mei, a woman troubled enough by her husband’s (Tse Kwan-ho) affair to seek out a temporary teaching post in a high school.
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Playing opposite Lau in this two-hander is Ng Siu-hin, the last of the trio of young actors from She Remembers, He Forgets (2015) to earn a starring role – following Neo Yau Hawk-sau in With Prisoners and Cecilia So Lai-shan in Never Too Late . The true protagonist in this elusive tale of obsession, Ng’s character, Cheung Chi-hang, is a moody youth who channels his yearning for a long-absent mother into an affection for older women.
After he saves a drunken Yuek-mei from drowning in the school swimming pool one night and develops a crush on her, Cheung learns she is to be his substitute class teacher. He gets into a schoolyard fight to defend her honour, and the bond between the two grows stronger when her home visit – Cheung has an alcoholic father (Tung Wai) who dreams that his wife has never left – leads to revelations about her unhappy marriage.
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Cheung enrols in a social dance class to learn more about her husband’s dance instructor mistress (Jennifer Yu Heung-ying, Sisterhood ) and report back to Yuek-mei. But his obsession with the unhappy housewife leads him into far more serious misdemeanours, from secretly breaking into her house to a pathetic – and rather sad – attempt to kidnap her daughter.