2017 PS Film Festival
film synopsis
Hong Kong star Shawn Yue is best known as a singer, a former model, and for mainstream movies like Wild City and Love in a Puff. Here he reveals his acting chops with a strong, layered performance as Tung, a former stockbroker suffering from severe bipolar disorder. Released from a mental hospital into the custody of his estranged truck-driver father, he moves into the older man's cramped, claustrophobic bed-sit and tries to reconcile himself with his troubled upbringing (his mother also suffered from mental illness it turns out, and his father abandoned the family). Judgmental and ignorant associates certainly don't make things any easier. (According to local surveys, one in 20 suffers from bipolar disorders, yet more than half Hongkongers do not want people with mental illness to live in their neighborhood.) A subplot involving Tung's attempts to win back his ex-fiancée (Charmaine Fong) is especially moving.
This low-budget, debut feature from Wang Chun is an admirably sensitive and sympathetic account of mental illness in a society in a hurry to look past it.