Review | A Light Never Goes Out movie review: Hong Kong’s last neon signs are the stars of this gentle story of loss, anchored by Sylvia Chang as a grieving widow
- Sylvia Chang’s Golden Horse-winning performance as a widow struggling to get over the death of her husband, a master neon sign craftsman, is genuinely riveting
- But the film leaves a far more lasting impression as a love letter to Hong Kong’s tradition of neon sign making, which is fading fast
3/5 stars
Directed by first-time filmmaker Anastasia Tsang Hin-ling, from a script she co-wrote with Tsoi So-man, A Light Never Goes Out is a gentle and relatively lightweight study of loss and recovery that is anchored by a riveting performance from screen icon Sylvia Chang Ai-chia.
Heung finds little comfort in the puzzlingly unsentimental attitude towards Bill’s death from her architect daughter Prism (Cecilia Choi Si-wan), as well as Prism’s clandestine plan to move to Australia with her fiancé.
Heung’s state of emotional paralysis is further upended as she finds traces of activity in Bill’s workshop, which was supposed to have closed a decade ago.
When Heung finds the sweet-faced young man Leo (Henick Chou Han-ning) – mid-suicide attempt, as we quickly learn – in the workshop one day, she is at once shocked and heartened by his claims that he is Bill’s apprentice, and that Bill’s last wish was to rebuild one of his old neon signs.