ReviewJust 1 Day movie review: Charlene Choi, Wong Cho-lam play would-be lovers in a romantic trifle – Erica Li’s directing debut

Erica Li, in her debut as a director, casts Charlene Choi as a woman in a bad relationship and Wong Cho-lam as an old school friend who’s terminally ill

In a banal story full of corny ideas Wong’s character, Mosaic, is in love with Angelfish, played by Choi, and asks her to be his girlfriend for a day

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Wong Cho-lam plays a terminally ill man with a crush on his old school friend (played by Charlene Choi) in a still from Just 1 Day (category IIA, Cantonese), directed by Erica Li.

Published: 4:15pm, 22 Jul 2022

2.5/5 stars

It always felt like a matter of time before Erica Li Man directed her first film.

Having begun her career as a pop singer in the late 1980s, Li has remained active in a variety of disciplines and become one of Hong Kong’s most prolific pop culture writers, publishing new work as a Canto-pop lyricist, novelist and screenwriter regularly since the ’90s.

For fans of Hong Kong cinema, Li is probably best known as the go-to writer for Herman Yau Lai-to, having scripted or co-scripted more than a dozen of the director’s films since 2009’s Split Second Murders, including recent hits The White Storm 2: Drug Lords and Shock Wave 2.

With this directorial debut, co-produced by Yau and adapted from one of her many novels, Li appears to have found a new leash of creative freedom – and her story duly goes into sentimental overdrive.

A terminal illness romance with a faint touch of whimsy, Just 1 Day marks the latest collaboration between Li and Charlene Choi Cheuk-yin, the lead actress of Yau’s Sara (2015), 77 Heartbreaks (2017) and 77 Heartwarmings (2021).