Film review: Aberdeen
Pang Ho-cheung made his directorial debut with the darkly comedic You Shoot, I Shoot in 2001 and remains best known for laugh fests like Vulgaria and Love in a Puff. The director-writer’s serious side, which comes up once in a while in films like the melancholy-tinged father-daughter drama, Isabella (2006), and his gory horror work Dream Home (2010), are often overlooked.
ABERDEEN
Starring: Louis Koo Tin-lok, Gigi Leung Wing-kei, Miriam Yeung Chin-wah, Eric Tsang Chi-wai, Lee Man-kwai
Director: Pang Ho-cheung
Category: IIB (Cantonese)
Pang Ho-cheung made his directorial debut with the darkly comedic You Shoot, I Shoot in 2001 and remains best known for laugh fests like Vulgaria and Love in a Puff. The director-writer’s serious side, which comes up once in a while in films like the melancholy-tinged father-daughter drama, Isabella (2006), and his gory horror work Dream Home (2010), are often overlooked.
Though Aberdeen, his latest offering, has moments geared to tickle the funny bone, it’s mainly meditative and understated in tone.
Those expecting a more “in your face” type of work may feel underwhelmed. But let this nuanced offering work its spell, and you’ll appreciate a reflective drama-comedy that’s admirably mature and fresh in spirit.
Centring on a threegenerational family with roots in a town whose name translates into English as Little Hong Kong, the film has a cast filled with big names and familiar faces. Yet, for the most part, these performers play regular folk. Veteran actor Ng Man-tat plays a fisherman turned Taoist priest who’s also the widower father of Tao (Louis Koo Tinlok), a cram-school tutor with a model-actress wife named Ceci (Gigi Leung Wing-kei). There’s also the cute — but definitely not pretty — young daughter who’s affectionately called Piggy (Lee Man-kwai), and Ching (Miriam Yeung Chin-wah), a museum guide and wife to radiologist Yau Kincheung (Eric Tsang Chi-wai).
At first glance, they all lead comfortable lives but problems and preoccupations bubble just below the surface. The Cheng family patriarch is unhappy that his son refuses to treat his nightclub hostess companion (Carrie Ng Ka-lai) with respect, while Ching is haunted by thoughts that her deceased mother continues to hate her from beyond the grave.