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ReviewThe Lyricist Wannabe movie review: Chung Suet-ying tries to break into Hong Kong’s Cantopop scene in My Prince Edward director’s coming-of-age comedy
- Chung Suet-ying stars as a woman who dreams of becoming a Cantopop lyricist – but who time and again comes up against hurdles
- Chung has the ‘everywoman’ quality needed to play the ordinary lead character. The supporting players, while interesting, pale next to her charismatic underdog
2-MIN READ2-MIN
4/5 stars
A young Hong Kong woman must negotiate a seemingly never-ending series of hurdles in her quest to launch a professional career as a Cantopop lyricist in The Lyricist Wannabe, a coming-of-age comedy written and directed by Norris Wong Yee-lam.
After tackling the concerns of Hong Kong women in their thirties in her acclaimed feature debut My Prince Edward (2019), Wong is again mining her own life with this funny and delicate adaptation of her semi-autobiographical novel from 2013, which was based on the obstacles she faced while pursuing her writing ambitions.
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Emerging actress Chung Suet-ying (Time), who is also a published lyricist, plays Law Wing-sze, the titular dreamer whose misfortunes arrive almost from the get-go, as she and her high-school friends see their new composition cut from a campus performance in an early scene.
As the film’s English title suggests, viewers should brace themselves not for an inspirational drama but a largely unsentimental portrait of frustrated dreams, as Law’s struggles over the following six years to have her first song lyrics published by a record label appear ceaseless.
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While her efforts to enter every songwriting contest and volunteer to work for any Cantopop professional prove mostly futile, the one respondent who does take up her lyrics, played by Tony Wu Tsz-tung, turns out to be an amateur composer still trying hard to have his first song released commercially.
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