Modest to a fault German indie, no doubt made with the Fest Circuit in mind, and, in this case, none the worse for it. Shooting in Super 16mm, Jonas Bak brings family intimacy to a fictional(?) story that follows real Mom Anke Bak as she navigates retirement from a church job in rural Germany. Widowed, early 60s, prone to anxiety/depression covered with a lot of knitting, she hopes to meet up with her kids at her daughter’s home not far from the house they grew up in before the father died. But when her Hong Kong situated son bails yet again, his third yearly miss, Mom goes off on her own to meet him in tempest-tossed Hong Kong just as the Pro-Democracy Marches are taking to the streets. Worse, her son won’t get back to town for a few days so she’s on her own. And it’s in the way she handles being alone in a bustling city and how she finds little opportunities for human contact that make up the second half of the film. Charmingly so. Are Hong Kong residents really so warm & welcoming? No big payoffs or revelations, just the pace of life neatly caught. The non-pro cast doesn’t put a foot wrong. Whether they put one right is another question as a want of dramatic tension is noticeable, a droning flat naturalism stemming from how everyone speaks English-as-a-second-language in HK. Perhaps what’s lost in translation isn’t poetry, but personality.
DOUBLE-BILL: No doubt, my last sentence gave it away, but LOST IN TRANSLATION/’03 does spring to mind. A film that, like all Sofia Coppola, would be twice as satisfying at half the length.
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