Papa

I guess the Lunar New Year releases are over, because the latest Chinese film to come out here is a Hong Kong release from late 2024 whose distributors were apparently giving other markets room to do their big year-end stuff before releasing it internationally. It is the sort of movie that seems to be made with an eye on the Hong Kong Film Awards the way American movies may have an eye on Oscar - very much a star vehicle for Lau Ching-Wan, but reserved, playing with form, maybe careful not to be too showy. I don't know the field well enough to guess how it will do; I kind of guess that The Last Dance might be the thing to beat, though I'm kind of amused that Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In is also a big-time contender. I love it, but it's very much an action-first movie with incredible production values.

Which is what usually gets exported for Hong Kong cinema, especially since it's been something like ten years since Wong Kar-Wai's last feature, but if feels like we're getting a few more Hong Kong dramas like this nowadays, as multiplexes have screens to fill and filmmakers have shifted to local concerns over the action that can be done bigger across the border.

Hopefully it plays. This had a surprisingly good audience Thursday evening after I feared I'd be the only one there.


Baba (Papa)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 13 March 2025 in AMC Causeway Street #8 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

I kind of wonder what some of my fellow Americans will make of Papa, because it not only seems to emphasize a different sort of ideals, but does not involve a lot of hand-wringing in getting there. Writer/director Philip Yung Chi-Kwong recognizes that this situation is a hell of a thing, and it doesn't really need to be kicked up any notches so much as examined from all sides.

It opens with Yuen Wing-nin (Sean Lau Ching-Wan) opening up his cafe, "Happy Valley", and looking across the street to his apartment, where the police are examining a crime scene: Nin's son Ming (Dylan So Man-To) has killed his sister Grace (Lainey Hung Nok-Yi) and mother Yin (Jo Koo Cho-Lam) with a cleaver before turning himself in to the police. By the time of Ming's court appearance, where he will plead guilty to manslaughter, he has been diagnosed with severe schizophrenia, which caused him to hear voices but may be treatable while he serves his time in the Siu Lam Psychiatric Center.

Or maybe this isn't the moment it happened, but some time later, when it's still impossible for Nin to look up without being brought back to that point in time. Yung tells things out of chronological order, but it's important to note that it's never with the intention of building some sort of mystery to be solved: The police spell out what happened very early on, and are told that it's a matter of a chemical imbalance rather than some sort of secret not long after. Instead, Yung constructs what feels like a sort of prison of memory; something will take Nin back to a happier time - when he first met Yin, buying a camera to capture Grace's birth, a scrawny kitten showing up at the restaurant - only for following that thread to return to the film's present. Sometimes, when there's some sort of conflict between Ming and someone else in the family, the audience (and likely Nin himself) will lean a bit forward, seeing if maybe that was the seed that led to the violence, but, no, it's just an ordinary memory tainted by what came after. Other times, he will seemingly forget his family is gone, or the audience will not be sure where they are on the timeline because Nin's brother will also have a son and daughter a couple years apart and a family dinner after 22 December 2010 can look like one from before.

The trick, often, is to look at Nin. Lau Ching-wan seems to have aged into the sort of face made for the kind of sadness that a grieving father would feel, with lines etched deep around sagging jowls, like slumping just a bit causes a stern gaze to slip. It's a performance that can seem monolithically stoic but reveals itself as some of Lau's best work as one looks closer. There's a kind and determined optimist not far beneath this working-class curmudgeon that one sees as he chats happily with customers or gives his now very fat cat a fancier dinner than he makes for himself. Without a lot of hand-wringing or making on-the-nose statements, it's clear that he still loves his son and is going to do what he can for him, and it seems so ingrained that the audience is seldom tempted to say "yeah, but…"

The rest of the cast impresses as well, even though they by the film's nature are only present sporadically: Jo Koo, especially, makes Yin feel like the sort of woman who would become Nin's partner in life and business, coming from the same sort of humble origins but more puckishly gregarious where one sort of has to discover that Nin is kind and reliable; they're compliments even though something at the base is very much the same. There's a lot of her reflected in Lainey Hung's Grace, though she's also clearly the sort of kid that maybe doesn't quite realize how much she's benefitted from her parents hard work and sacrifice, a little more playful and sassy. She and Dylan So appear to be making their film debuts here, and So is being nominated for best newcomer awards, and he's quietly very good, playing Ming more as an average moody teen than one with a particular edge, and capturing both his obvious guilt and how it's ultimately both frightening and a weight off to have the way his illness distorts things dissipate.

Yung mostly eschews speeches or dramatic turns, more often finding ways for the regular world to suddenly frustrate Nin. He's often better at finding odd little angles one might not consider, like a fellow inmate telling Ming he needs to find some way to present who he used to be as his treatment help him heal, or the little ways Nin tries to connect with the world, and how his community clearly likes and wants to support him without showering him with pity. He and his crew are also making the little apartments and shops in the Yuens' corner of Tsuen Wan feel warm, cramped, homey, or shabby as need be. It grounds Nin in this place, time, and class, making everything on the screen a reflection of him and his journey without getting too fancy.

It's a bit odd when Yung does finally circle around to showing the crime - I found myself caught between the feelings of it being exploitative because there was not actually being anything new to see and that we kind of had to see what Nin and Ming were carrying around, where each happy memory would lead them - but that's perhaps the only moment that in retrospect feels less than sure-footed. Otherwise, it's impressive work poking around something horrific without succumbing to despair or offering a solution.