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Edmund Lee

3.5/5 stars
Working-class despair, relationship troubles and long-buried family secrets vie for attention in Once in a Blue Moon, writer-director Andy Lo Yiu-fai’s long-awaited follow-up to his exquisite 2016 film Happiness.
Depicting the prosaic concerns of two adult children in a single-parent family in Hong Kong during the Covid-19 pandemic, Lo’s bittersweet film is a character-driven drama that is heavy on feelings. It is thoughtful and endearing, and prefers minor developments to major dramatic conflict.
The film begins with an old photo as its protagonist, Mei-chen (Gladys Li Ching-kwan in her most complete performance yet), explains in a voice-over that it is the first and last time she was pictured in a family portrait alongside her father, who left the household before she turned one and never returned.


All her life she has regretted not having had the opportunity to get to know her father, although she faces more immediate problems in the present.
Mei-chen, who is inexperienced in romance, has just started using a dating app at the urging of her happy-go-lucky cousin (Amy Tang Lai-ying), but her first date produces not a match but an awkward trip to a love motel, followed by plenty of unanswered texts and even more question marks in her head.
Life is not getting any easier in her latest dead-end job at a convenience store, either; the creepy, predatory manager (Kyle Wong Kai-ho) proves to be toxic masculinity personified right away.

Meanwhile, Mei-chen’s older brother, Floyd (Peter Chan Charm-man), is struggling to come to terms with the crumbling of his marriage to Wing (Li Sum-ling of Cantopop girl group Collar, in her film debut), who seeks a divorce and is already seeing someone else.
Floyd has been living alone in the unit in an industrial building that houses his aquarium business for the past two years, but this sanctuary is repeatedly breached by an overly friendly next-door neighbour (Yeung Wai-lun), who brings new perspectives, as well as moments of rueful humour, to the miserable Floyd.
The siblings were brought up without a moral centre – their loving and privately remorseful mother (Loletta Lee Lai-chun) might be the one who caused the family break-up – and yet their experiences as underachievers in life make the film all the more heartwarming.

By turns sad and hopeful, Once in a Blue Moon offers a mostly engaging look at adulthood in all its harsh glory. Lo is non-judgmental to a fault when it comes to his protagonists; all he does, figuratively, is watch them fall, then belatedly offer them a friendly hand.
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Happiness director Andy Lo delivers an emotional, endearing and bittersweet family drama set in Hong Kong during the Covid-19 pandemic


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An assessment or critique of a service, product or creative endeavour.  Film reviews, restaurant reviews, reviews of art exhibitions. (Eg. Crazy Rich Asians: an important film, yes, but a good one?)


Review

Review | Once in a Blue Moon movie review: Gladys Li, Peter Chan confront life’s disappointments

Happiness director Andy Lo delivers an emotional, endearing and bittersweet family drama set in Hong Kong during the Covid-19 pandemic