Memories to Choke On, Drinks to Wash Them Down movie review: omnibus feature offers breezy, bittersweet slices of Hong Kong life

3.5/5 stars

It might not sound like much of a pitch for a film to spend its entire 77 minutes watching characters walk, talk and reminisce, but this Hong Kong-set omnibus feature written, directed and produced by the husband-and-wife pair of Leung Ming-kai, cinematographer of such acclaimed films as Murmur of the Hearts and Suk Suk , and Kate Reilly, an American actress, does exactly that. And it manages to hit just the right note.

A breezy, bittersweet tone pervades in Memories to Choke on, Drinks to Wash Them Down, comprising three fictional shorts – all charming, chatty two-handers – and one documentary short that, while interesting, gives the compilation a haphazard vibe. If Leung and Reilly had instead stayed with fiction and added two more segments of matching themes and quality, this could well live longer in local cinema lore, instead of settling as a curiosity item.

It starts with Forbidden City, a disarming account of a day in the lives of an old Chinese woman (Leong Cheok-mei) and her very patient Indonesian helper (Mia Mungil). The former is a dementia patient who keeps telling tired jokes and recalling her early days as a mainland immigrant, and her desire to venture into town on this day is masterfully averted by the latter, who must be one of the nicest maids you’ll ever encounter on screen.

The wistful second story, Toy Stories, sees two young adult brothers take a trip down memory lane at the soon-to-be-sold toy shop that their mother has run in a working-class neighbourhood since they were kids. While one of them (played by Lam Yiu-sing, We Are Legends ) hints at the financial burden of his new life as a father, the other (Zeno Koo Ting-hin, I’m Livin’ It ) has other ideas for the business.

Romance is in the air, albeit never spoken of, in Yuen Yeung, a Before Sunrise-esque drama about a high-school economics teacher (Gregory Wong Chung-yiu, The Menu ) and a new English teacher from America (Reilly) that he takes on countless food tours in the year she stays here. As they sample the best of Hong Kong’s cha chaan teng and street cuisine, the short also offers a reminder of the democratic aspirations that Hong Kong people once had back in 2014.

Things then get truly political with the non-fiction It’s Not Gonna Be Fun, which documents a young barista’s attempt to unseat a pro-establishment incumbent in the district council elections. Lam Sin-tung lost, and this quirky character study actually ends up painting an unflattering portrait of Hong Kong’s younger generation. The one thing you can’t accuse the filmmakers of, though, is hypocrisy; their film certainly doesn’t shy away from showing all the contradictions that the city has to offer.

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