previously published on Asian Movie Pulse
True crime served as an inspiration for the Hong Kong born and based film critic-turned-filmmaker Philip Yung for his so far best known work, the thriller “Port of Call” (2015). Semi-true crime stories about the gangster “scene” of Hong Kong in the 60s fuelled his next film, the censored crime-drama “Where the Wind Blows” (2022). And the well-publicised 2010 Heong Wo Street Murder, in which the mentally deranged teenager Kan Ka-leung killed his mother and sister, while his father was at work in the cafe he owned, serves as the starting point of his newest flick “Papa” that premiered at the last year’s edition of Tokyo Film Festival and is currently nominated for three Asian and eleven Hong Kong Film Awards.
Yung opens the film with the crime itself and comes back to it in the climactic moment at the ¾ mark of the 131-minute runtime, but the crime itself is not positioned at the centre of his attention here. Instead, he tries to see the whole thing, the cause, the past and the aftermath from the point of view of the perpetrator’s father Nin played by the star actor Sean (Ching Wan) Lau. Surviving his son’s rampage by the fact that he was away (supporting his “bad habit” of spending too much time at work) leaves him with a very specific blend of survivor’s guilt he has to wrestle with. His son Ming (played by the newcomer Dylan So as a teenager and the singer-actor-presenter Edan Lui as adult in a cameo) is about to be released, as Nin remembers his life with his previous, normal life wife Yin (Jo Kuk) and the children Ming and Grace (Lainey Hung) in the series of time-hopping flashbacks.
The lack of conventional plot and the fragmented structure should not work in favour of the film that uses a murder as its starting point, but it does. Yung organises these fragments of Nin’s memories as chapters resembling short stories that reveal pieces of mosaic from different angles in non-linear fashion that mimics the protagonist’s stream of consciousness, revealing his regrets, his emotional pain, but also his will not to sever ties with the only remaining family member. Basically, what we get here is a cross between “We Need to Talk about Kevin” (Lynne Ramsay, 2011) and “The Broken Circle Breakdown” (Felix van Groeningen, 2012), but from a strictly individual point of view garnished with the realistic “flavour” of the life in and near Hong Kong changing over the span of two decades, but also remaining the same for the protagonist who feels stuck, so he tries to stick to the patterns he knows and feels safe with.
The moody editing by Jojo Shek could have bit a bit tighter, so the runtime would be shorter, but it efficiently mimics the stream of Nin’s consciousness and memories that do not have to be logically sorted out and concentrated. Ke Ding’s music fits the bill, while the use of Teddy Robin’s 1981 ballad “This Is Love” in some key scenes serves as masterstroke for dictating the viewer’s emotions. The decision to film the whole movie in 4:3 aspect ratio in order to provide a documentary-like glimpse into the characters’ ordinary lives proved to be right one both due to Chin Tin-chang’s careful lensing and Sean Lau’s masterclass in micro-acting where the apparent stoicism masks Nin’s inner turmoil.
Philip Yung’s approach to directing resembles conducting an orchestra that plays a modern piece that seems disjointed, but ends up being somehow harmonious. Each individual move could be defended and justified after the analysis, but the feeling is it might lack the emotional charge on the auteur’s part. In the end, “Papa” seems more like a critics’ movie made by a (former) film critic to be appreciated by the (current) film critics, festival juries and movie connossieurs rather than “average” audiences, but the humaneness coming from its story should not be neglected as well.
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