Review | Hong Kong Family movie review: Teresa Mo, Mirror’s Edan Lui in drama about a household torn apart that’s one of the best local films in 2022
- After a working-class family implodes, one of their deaths later presents the chance to make up. What ensues is a tapestry of intimate moments in everyday life
- Directed by Eric Tsang, the cast gives naturalistic performances to make this a touching film that explores communication limits in a Chinese household
4/5 stars
Members of an ordinary working-class family that imploded on a winter solstice several years ago try to pick up the pieces in Hong Kong Family, an ensemble drama marked by the assured storytelling of Eric Tsang Hing-weng and the range of wonderfully naturalistic performances he has elicited from the cast.
Few could foresee the spectacular fallout that ensues when unhappy housewife Ling (Teresa Mo Shun-kwan) cuts her finger during the preparations of a traditional winter solstice dinner at her family’s ancestral home.
By the end of this episode, Ling’s financially troubled brother, Ming (Joey Leung Cho-yiu), has sworn never to see their elderly mother (Alice Fung So-bor) again; Ling has asked for a divorce from her insensitive husband Chun (Tse Kwan-ho); and the couple’s hot-tempered son Yeung (Edan Lui Cheuk-on) has decided to move out for good.
Eight years have since passed, and the arrival of Ming’s young daughter Joy (Angela Yuen Lai-lam) from overseas, quietly bearing the news of her father’s sudden death, represents an unlikely chance to start the healing process for those who have been scarred by that day.
In a tapestry of intimate moments from each of the family members’ everyday lives, we see how Ling spends her daytime as a domestic helper and finds an illusory sense of home from the father and son she works for.