![]() Pic has none of the lengthy takes or alienating direction that often afflicts Chinese art movies. Tam gives this material, which is fairly thin in plotting terms, a visual rigor and slightly abstract feel that manages to evoke a specific universe. A quiet coda, set some 10 years later, brings down the curtain on a melancholic note. The boy turns to thieving to support Cheong-shing’s gambling habit, and he’s eventually sent to a detention center, where a visit from his father ends in sudden violence. Ling leaves, and father and son (the pic’s original Chinese title) are alone. Still, the boy’s loyalties are with his father and, after he spills the beans about mom, she gets a terrible beating. Turns out dad, Chow Cheong-shing (Aaron Kwok), a once-handsome ladies’ man, has been abusing her. Story is largely told through the eyes of a young boy (Gow Ian Iskander) who returns home one day to find his mom, Ling (Charlie Young), packing for a quick exit. After world preeming at Pusan, with its European bow a day later at the Rome Film Fest, pic goes out in Hong Kong and China Dec. Just then, far off in the distance, the emotionally scarred son catches a glimpse of a man who appears to be his father.Dedicated to “All My Students, Malaysia and Hong Kong,” pic is clearly a work from the heart, and even starts with an intertitle from Tam himself hoping auds will just sit back and surrender to the experience. Years later, Chow's son has grown into a man, and is suddenly stricken with an overpowering bout of nostalgia and that leads him back to his old hometown and the quiet streets of his youth. Soon thereafter, when Chow drops by to visit his son, the boy launches a vicious attack on his father that drives the pair apart for more than a decade. Now forced to resort to petty thievery as a means of helping dad pay off a series of lingering gambling debts, the young boy soon ends up locked away in a juvenile-detention facility. When Chow's admiring young son (Gow Ian Iskander) reveals to his father that his mother is packing her bags and planning a hasty getaway, the enraged Chow delivers a merciless beating to the woman that leaves father and son to fend for themselves. There was a time when Chow Cheong-shing (Aaron Kwok) was considered a smooth-talking ladies' man, but many years of gambling have turned him into a bitter and abusive shell of his former self. A young boy finds his unwavering loyalty to his loutish dad sealing a decidedly grim fate in Hong Kong director-turned-editor Patrick Tam's first directorial effort since his 1989 thriller My Heart Is That Eternal Rose. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2023
Categories |