‘True Love, For Once In My Life’ review: Fruit Chan produces smartphone-shot Hong Kong drama

Dir: Delon Siu Koon-ho. Hong Kong. 2024. 110mins

The ache that outcomes from one accomplice’s infidelity and the upheaval of divorce varieties the muse of Delon Siu Koon-ho’s True Love, For As soon as In My Life, an unvarnished, virtually cinema vérité-style drama chronicling a Hong Kong lady’s life as she goes from spouse to mom to widow over 20 years. Quite than merely fixate on the disintegration of a wedding, Siu additionally ponders the probably of real love, soul mates and destiny. Tough across the edges, intimate and experimental, True Love is lifted above its clearly modest finances by its willingness to acknowledge a uniquely Hong Kong sort of infidelity – cross-border philandering – and a robust central efficiency from standard veteran Cecilia Yip Tung.

Acknowledges a uniquely Hong Kong sort of infidelity

Though True Love, For As soon as In My Life shouldn’t be the direct product of current authorities insurance policies designed to domesticate the following technology of filmmakers – such because the First Function Movie Initiative, which produced Oliver Chan Siu-kuen’s Nonetheless Human and Sasha Chuk Tsz-yin’s Fly Me To The Moon amongst others – it’s a part of a wave of inward-looking impartial movies which have been proliferating in Hong Kong during the last decade or so. Produced by impartial godhead Fruit Chan (Made in Hong Kong, Dumplings) and starring Yip and fellow veteran Tse Kwan-ho (field workplace hit A Responsible Conscience), very long time artwork director Siu’s debut is notable for being the primary Hong Kong function shot on iPhone. 

Because the trade struggles to reinvent so-called Hong Kong cinema past the boundaries of crime thrillers and marital arts motion movies, the guerrilla nature of True Love, For As soon as In My Life represents a curious new wrinkle for native producers. The movie premiered at Pingyao, and different indie festivals might come calling. Wider arthouse distribution will possible depend on how nicely Chan and firm clear up the movie’s low-fi components, nevertheless it ought to resonate with native audiences when it opens in Hong Kong on March 7.

True Love, For As soon as In My Life begins within the early 2000s, a time when Hong Kong companies have been exploiting the potential of China’s Guangzhou area. Shifting forwards and backwards throughout the border was profitable, however was additionally a pressure on marriages and households. Hongkonger Sabrina (Yip) is working an nameless workplace job whereas her childhood sweetheart and accountant husband Andrew (Tse) dumps his apply to start looking for unspecified alternatives in Guangzhou. Earlier than lengthy, Andrew abandons Sabrina and their two youngsters, asks for a divorce and remarries. Sarcastically, when Andrew takes unwell and returns to Hong Kong for medical remedy, it’s Sabrina he leans on for consolation – and she or he doesn’t hesitate to return to him.

The movie is predicated on the autobiographical novel by Sabrina Tse Shuk-fun, who government produces and co-wrote the screenplay with Lou Shiu-wa (Eric Tsang’s Hong Kong Household, Ann Hui’s The Approach We Are) — and, maybe unsurprisingly, it provides Yip loads to work with. Absentee spouses and companions who work abroad are under no circumstances distinctive to Hong Kong, however the movie shines a lightweight on how cross-border careers and infidelities significantly have an effect on households on this metropolis. The uneasy relationship between Sabrina and Andrew in some ways mirrors the one between Hong Kong and the mainland during the last quarter century.

Uncooked, naturalistic smartphone photos lend the movie a voyeuristic tone, as if the viewer is spying on Sabrina’s household breakdown and her final acceptance of a solitary life post-divorce. Siu, Tse and Lou make it clear the divorce inordinately impacts Sabrina, and she or he’s the one left to make peace along with her grownup youngsters (Hui Yuet-sheung and Himmy Wong Ting-him).

It’s additionally clear Sabrina is a believer within the idea of getting one real love and Yip (Patrick Tam’s Nomad) makes her selflessness comprehensible, holding the slight narrative collectively by giving her character resilience and empathy with out ever letting her to tip over into pitiable.