A debt-ridden wedding planner inadvertently becomes a successful funeral planner. However, he must convince a traditional Taoist priest of his legitimacy to continue operating in the field.
That's the description on IMDB and maybe a place or two else, so it's official-ish. I didn't actually mark the film as a comedy when I listed it on the "Next Week" post, though I thought I did, but for whatever reason it was kicking around in my head as one, even if it's about two hours and listed as a drama, but that sort of oddball situation and description sounds kind of light.
It's not particularly light, as it turns out, which maybe makes me a bit more surprised that it's apparently a big hit in Hong Kong - some of the folks who talk about film in Hong Kong on social media.were off-handedly commenting about folks just going to see The Last Dance again if the next movie coming out featuring Michael Hui (Donnie Yen action vehicle, The Prosecutor, and apparently Donnie Yen as a prosecuting attorney is a whole kettle of fish over there) doesn't do so hot, so it's apparently been packing them in for a month, even though it doesn't exactly have the look of a crowd pleaser. Sometimes another country's crowd pleasers can look unusual, though, and the way this opens with titles about the "gates of heaven" buddhist ritual being recognized as important cultural heritage, and maybe it's something fairly central to that life which hasn't been seen that often.
At any rate - pretty decent movie, and it's doing fairly well here, apparently. It'll probably have its last shows relatively early in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, and an 18-day run isn't bad for a Hong Kong film here.
Po · Dei Juk (The Last Dance)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 2024 in AMC Causeway Street #10 (first-run, laser DCP)
The part of my brain that tends to pull movies apart to see how they work has issues with this film; i can't help but think that it doesn't really need the first-billed actor at all, to the extent that you can almost forget about the girlfriend that is kind of crucial in terms of the whole thing getting started until she reappears near the end so that he can kind of have something that shows he's a changed man as the film wraps up. And yet, for as much as my instincts say to focus on the father/daughter story, I can't really say I'd care to lose any of the rest.
That "rest" starts by introducing Dominic Ngai (Dayo Wong Chi-Wah), fiftyish, not particularly handsome, and like a lot of Hong Kong's serial entrepreneurs, reeling in the post-Covid world. After his wedding planning business collapses, he's got just enough to buy out girlfriend Jade's Uncle Ming (Paul Chun Pui), who is retiring from his work as a funeral director to emigrate to Vancouver. He plans to bring some of the customization and add-on offers that are common at weddings to that business, but Ming only owns and manages half of the business. The remainder belongs to Buddhist priest Man Kwok (Michael Hui Koon-Man), whose nickname "Hello Man" does not refer to him being jovial. Exacting and principled, Man is not impressed with Ngai, but there are issues within his home as well - son Ben (Tommy Chu Pak-Hong) followed him into the family business, but is not as skilled or dedicated (and his Catholic wife is pressuring him to convert so that their son can have a leg up at a private school); daughter Yuet (Michelle Wai) is a high-strung paramedic carrying on an affair a married doctor friend (but mostly when she loses a patient).
After all, you can see a pretty good movie that could be made just from the wedding planner taking over a funeral director's business. It might be more comedic, as I had assumed this one would be, but there being two different movies that have to share space may just be what makes this one work. Dominic's story is worldly, with director Anselm Chan Mau-Yin and co-writer Cheng Wai-Kei finding a way of making one uneasy about the commercialism but also seeing how the inner workings so one understands the need for the commerce a bit. It teaches the audience about coping with death on a practical level while also letting Dominic perhaps get a bit more spiritual. That the commercial and mystical are linked in this business also means that the mundane grounds the story of the Man and his family, making faith and tradition more manageable things to deal with and more open to questioning than is often the case in this sort of story.
And that, I think, is where the really interesting parts of the film are, with the filmmakers seeming to believe the same, as it comes to dominate the movie. There's an intriguingly twisted irony to how the daughter who idolized her father growing up becomes an EMT who cannot handle death (her father's whole world) because the priestly tradition scorns women even as it has inevitably become just the family business to her brother. The family dynamic there is pointed and there is a sort of weary authenticity to how they fight or close ranks as appropriate. It feels like it's been going on for decades without ever becoming numb. Michael Hui, Michelle Wai, and Timmy Chu create a family that seems dysfunctional but not quite to the level where it should be blown up, with Wai's seeming about to explode overshadowing Chu's resignation that reveals itself as painful in its own way.
Dayo Wong doesn't really have the same sort of room to work. As mentioned, Catherine Chow Ka-Yee's Jade only appears relatively briefly at the beginning and end, and his on-the-job team is not built to create workplace drama. Dominic's clashes with Man often feel like a static situation rather than a give and take. The good news is that Dayo Wong can supply enough self-conscious energy to power a scene on his own, and can tamp it down to a sort of professional nervousness when dealing with customers with their specific issues. Even if the way the story has written doesn't give the most dramatic parts of Dominic's part a chance to play out on screen, he can hold the screen while explaining what led him to where he is.
The film is quite predictable in some ways - the funerals are not quite rote, but you can see their functions on the larger story, and there are bits in the end that feel like "this is how you structure a screenplay to pay things off" rather than things which really felt earned. The good news is that all the little pieces that don't quite fit together naturally are good enough on their own and one can see a pattern once they're put together, even if there are gaps to it.
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