Review | Montages of a Modern Motherhood movie review: Hedwig Tam shines as an exhausted new mother
Hong Kong writer-director Oliver Chan, a mother herself, paints a grim picture of maternity in a patriarchal Chinese society
3/5 stars
It is all doom and gloom for the first-time mother at the heart of Montages of a Modern Motherhood, a meticulously observed and wonderfully acted drama but one that may not connect with a wider audience because of its unusual, and almost perverse, resolve to paint new parenthood as a completely joyless experience.
Chan, who has a five-year-old son herself, has expressed the hope that viewers will develop a better understanding of the postnatal struggles of women through her film. Ironically, Montages of a Modern Motherhood does work much better as a cautionary tale than an intimate portrait of three-dimensional characters.