Small-scale and intimate (in the humanist/Neo-Realist/DOGME tradition), Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui is something of a ‘close-up’ magician in this pink-collar/working-class family drama, cumulatively involving us thru quotidian detail. Opening with little more than a widowed mom in a dead-end supermarket job and her teenage son wiling away the day at home with naps & video, we expand step-by-step to meet the whole extended family along with the boy’s friends in and out of school. Mom is pretty much ‘there’ from the start, while the son (cute enough for ‘boy-band’ material) turns out to be a pretty good kid, if no self-starter. But it’s the widening interpersonal relationships (and shopping trips) between Aunts, Uncles, Cousins & Grandparents that build the film’s considerable interest. With Hui’s understated technique seemingly gliding by events, yet not missing a trick or losing us in a score of crisscrossing characters. (On the other hand, the digital capture used here nothing to celebrate.) And between health crises, a funeral, test score results, a dismal out-of-town lunch with a remarried son, meals in/meals out, more shopping (and de rigeur gift refusal), a portrait of working class/high-rise neighborhoods on the outskirts of Hong Kong is beautifully caught and, by the end, quietly moving.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Though Hui has a knack for letting us know who’s who with no need of a family scorecard, I couldn’t quite figure out which of the Aunties had died. Perhaps relieved it wasn’t that sweet hospitalized grandmother with a yen for ‘bird’s nest’ congee.
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