Review | Mama’s Affair movie review: Mirror members Keung To, Jer Lau make impressive acting debuts in heart-warming drama by writer-director Kearen Pang
- Hong Kong boy band stars Lau and Keung play, respectively, the disaffected son of a talent manager and an aspiring singer whom the manager turns into a star
- Keung is endearing in a role that suits his awkward charm, while Lau has the more demanding task in rising filmmaker Kearen Pang’s gem of a second feature
3.5/5 stars
A pop idol is born in Mama’s Affair, and the experience of attaining stardom at once allows the young man in question to put a tragic past behind him and restores harmony to his artiste manager’s quietly disintegrating family.
On the other hand, Mama’s Affair marks the second directing effort of Kearen Pang Sau-wai – she also wrote the screenplay and has a hand in producing and editing the film – and it cements the former theatre actress and playwright’s position as one of Hong Kong’s new filmmakers to watch.
Teresa Mo Shun-kwan plays Mei-fung, a stay-at-home mother who used to be a prominent manager of Canto-pop singers before she retired about 20 years ago upon learning she was pregnant.
Her husband (Vincent Wan Yeung-ming) has now moved out to live with another woman, and their oblivious 17-year-old son Hin (Lau), a top student who excels at directing musical plays, can’t wait to leave his cloying mother behind to go to an overseas university.
Mei-fung’s dream of feeling relevant again takes shape when she chances upon Fong Ching (Keung), a cha chaan teng waiter who once aspired to be a singer – until his family was destroyed years earlier by an alcoholic father (filmmaker Law Wing-cheong, in perhaps his best supporting role yet).
Soon enough, Ching is taken into Mei-fung’s household and forms a rivalry with Hin for the matriarch’s attention. The troubled Ching’s meteoric rise to stardom alternately tests and strengthens the bonds between the three, in a story that is ultimately more about their feelings than achievements.
While Keung proves endearing in a role that is tailor-made to suit his awkward charm, Lau comes across as the better actor playing the challenging part of a rich but disaffected teenager who struggles to cope with his parents’ self-centred decisions.
Mama’s Affair culminates in protracted scenes of a concert performance – pure fan service for Keung’s fans – that drain the proceedings of much of their narrative urgency, and the happy ending for every one of the major characters feels like a cop-out after all the intriguing build-up.
Still, there are so many moments of authentic humour and emotion throughout Pang’s meticulously scripted story that Mama’s Affair must be recognised as a rare commercial product that nevertheless manages to stay true to its filmmaker’s artistic sensitivity. A minor gem of a film.
