UID:
kobvindex_ZLB15517468
Format:
1 DVD-Video (90 Min.)
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NTSC ; 4:3
Content:
Chui's film neatly elides the precise moment of the handover, the anchor-point of Hong Kong Time: the action disconcertingly jumps from the last huge June 4 commemoration in Hong Kong a month before the handover to a year or more afterwards, when Hong Kongers are forced to deal with the effects of the post-1997 Asian economic slump. The film affords its characters no grounding, no stable fulcrum around which history pivoted (July 1), but takes them directly from pre- to post-return disequilibrium. But Leaving in Sorrow largely keeps its own balance, aligning style, structure, mood, and setting to fine expressive effect. Leaving in Sorrow is a story about movement and about home: its themes are emigration, immigration, abandoning and recovering the places one calls home. It follows three lightly interlocked stories, set in Hong Kong, Beijing, and San Francisco. In the first, HK born, SF resident, Ray, a young vaguely info-tech style businessman and hyperactive "ladies' man" returns to HK to reunite with his semi-estranged father. The death of a cherished elder relative draws both back to their native mainland village, where Ray experiences a somewhat clichéd reawakening. The second story involves the upright but timorously passive Pastor Alex Lai and his money-minded real estate agent wife Ivy. They struggle as the strains in their marriage become exacerbated by overheated pre-1997 HK property market: Lai wrestles with selling his church to hustler/developers, as Ivy, planning to emigrate to NYC, schemes to sell their flat. The third story, the most carefully delineated of the set, follows HK gossip magazine writer Hong on his dogged (even stalker-like) pursuit of his editor Chris. His unrelenting efforts finally wear her down. Much later, she reveals to him her still traumatic memories of studying in Beijing in June 1989, and he takes her back to confront what she left behind. (Shelly Kraicer)
Note:
Ländercode: 0
,
Orig.: Hong Kong, 2001
,
Chines. mit engl. und chines. Untertiteln
Language:
Chinese
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