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Review | The Way We Keep Dancing movie review: Adam Wong’s sequel to 2013 hit changes gear to consider plight of Hong Kong performing artists
- Rather than bring back characters from his earlier film, Wong has actors playing fictionalised versions of themselves
- He introduces a new protagonist, playing himself in real life. The characters do a lot of talking - but there isn’t even a memorable dance sequence
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2.5/5 stars
The makers of The Way We Keep Dancing have their hearts in the right place, even if the movie about the plight of Hong Kong’s grass-roots performing artists is less an engrossing dramatisation of their stories than a needlessly bloated docudrama.
The film does make a considered protest at the lack of support for Hong Kong’s creative industries, but any viewer expecting a competent follow-up to writer-director Adam Wong Sau-ping’s enthusiastic 2013 hit The Way We Dance – arguably the greatest Hong Kong film ever made on the city’s street dance culture – will be disappointed. This film takes a very loose approach to storytelling, and lacks any memorable dance sequence.
With a Chinese title that cheekily translates as “The Way We Dance 3” (even though there was never a part two in reality), The Way We Keep Dancing follows not the original characters, but fictionalised versions of the actors who once played them, as they navigate Hong Kong’s overtly commercial urban spaces in pursuit of their artistic careers.
Cherry Ngan Cheuk-ling plays Hana, an up-and-coming artiste in the entertainment industry who previously starred in The Way We Dance and its (fictional) sequel alongside several of her friends. Other returnees include Leung (Babyjohn Choi Hon-yick), a famous YouTuber with a small production company of his own; Dave (Lokman Yeung), a dedicated street dancer who is also Hana’s boyfriend; and Milk Tea (Lydia Lau King-man), a choreographer and regular instructor at a dance studio.
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