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Review | I’m Livin’ It movie review: Aaron Kwok plays a McRefugee in heartbreaking poverty drama
- Kwok plays Bowen, a white-collar criminal who is de facto leader of a group of homeless people that spend their nights in a Hong Kong fast-food restaurant
- Comedian Cheung Tat-ming won a Hong Kong Film Award for his part in the film, but every member of the ensemble cast gets a chance to show their acting chops
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3.5/5 stars
The plight of Hong Kong’s McRefugees receives unabashedly melodramatic treatment in this humane yet relentlessly bleak movie. Ironically, in a year that has seen the film’s theatrical release repeatedly postponed by the coronavirus pandemic, the lives of those homeless people who are used to sleeping at night in 24-hour McDonald’s joints have become even more of a nightmare.
Produced by Soi Cheang Pou-soi, I’m Livin’ It premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival in October 2019, before going on to win a Hong Kong Film Award in May for the veteran comedian Cheung Tat-ming, in the best supporting actor category.
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The feature-film debut of long-time assistant director Wong Hing-fan is clearly pitched as another showcase for the acting of Aaron Kwok Fu-shing, the Canto-pop star playing a former investment expert who has fallen on hard times. But it is the ensemble cast who are memorable and who will win audiences’ hearts.
Kwok plays Bowen, the de facto spiritual leader of a small group who spend their nights in a fast-food restaurant. Too ashamed to reunite with his mother (Nina Paw Hee-ching) and sister (Kathy Wu Jiaxing) since the prison spell that preceded his homelessness, Bowen appears content with life as a vagabond.
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