Tuned in
Writer Jill Leung enlists Ekin Cheng for a romantic music drama that’s unafraid to fly its nerd flag – and works better for it.
Last Song for You
Director: Jill Leung • Writer: Jill Leung
Starring: Ekin Cheng, Natalie Hsu, Ian Chan, Cecilia Choi, Wong Man-wai
Hong Kong • 1hr 46mins
Opens Hong Kong Dec 20 • I
Grade: B
What was it we were saying about big swings the other day? Was it something about how Disney is allergic to them and how Robert Zemeckis takes them often and just as often misses the mark by a long shot? Insufferable as Here was I’ll go for the big swing any day, and veteran screenwriter (SPL 2: A Time of Consequences, Paradox) and first-time director Jill Leung Lai-yin takes a wild one in Last Song for You | 久別重逢, a romantic music drama that doesn’t do much for my cold, black heart but will be a delight for fans of the form. Helping things along are an endearingly shaggy performance by Ekin Cheng Yee-kin as So Sing-wah, a Cantopop wash-out with a drinking problem, and Leung’s straight-faced commitment to the bit, so to speak. Last Song pulls influences from films ranging from Cape No. 7 to Begin Again to A Balloon’s Landing, and drops a fantastical plot device out of left field into the third act, which sees So cross time and space for a massive life do-over.
And you know what? He pulls it off. Metaphysical fuckery can be trouble when shoehorned into more traditional genres, like romance, but Leung is elegant with his “What if?” and treats the fantasy like the ordinary. This matter-of-factness recalls Lee Hyun-seung’s Il Mare (The Lake House to you heathens out there) and keeps Last Song from being cloying, or from tipping into the inane. It’s not going to win over non-fans of romance, but it’s certainly a refreshing spin on a familiar story about a middle-aged man at a low point in life, reflecting on regrets and blown chances – and getting a chance to fix them.
Remember records?
We meet So in the hospital after what could be alcohol poisoning, perhaps a drug overdose, some of it inspired by his inability to finish composing a song for an up-and-coming singer. He sees the comments on Insta: he’s a has been. He’s lost his songwriting touch. He’s totally ’90s and he knows it. Stumbling around the ward he meets up with Ha Man-huen (Cecilia Choi Si-wan), his great, unacknowledged love of high school. They chat, or she does, he mumbles something about seeing her later and then boom! She dies. That shakes him, but not quite enough to give up the bottle and get to work, but when her daughter, Summer (Natalie Hsu Yan-yi) shows up on his doorstep asking to come to Japan with her to scatter her mom’s ashes, he reluctantly agrees. It helps that she looks just like Man-huen as a teen.
Off they go on a two-track journey. One to catch a specific sunset in Japan and the other down memory lane, to when a younger So (played by the latest in a seemingly endless supply of MIRRORs, Ian Chan Cheuk-yin) and Man-huen (Hsu again) spent their last school year on Cheung Chau, forming a tight bond through a shared love of music and unconventional home lives. She was his muse and the sounding board to his earliest attempts at songwriting. He was a friendly ear for her wackier ideas and kindred literary spirit. In the present, Summer wins So over with her relentless (but never obnoxious) encouragement and uncanny familiarity with all things So. Needless to say, there’s more to Summer than meets the eye.
Veteran film-goers will likely get the sinking feeling something supernatural is up at some point in Last Song for You, that or the idea So is imagining things – which would be entirely in character given his drinking and possible depression – but Leung is not just a romantic but a fantacist. And an optimist. At a time when Hongkongers are nervous about the future and given to nostalgia quite intensely, when many believe they’re at a low point, the film is a soothing, sentimental balm that proudly leans into its hoodoo and mixes the past (Cheng, old Cheung Chau, vinyl) and the future (Chan, modern Japan, iPhone files) without the maudlin misery. Last Song’s happy ending suggests we can take an introverted moment or two and find that tune, if maybe not as literally as So does. In fairness, the film is about a guy struggling with a mid-life crisis that goes beyond needing a sports car, and without Cheng it would lack the groundedness to rise above the fantasy. Yeah, yeah, it’s Ekin Cheng. Guy’s a mess, right? Still, his “one of us” persona and Leung taking just enough off his pop star glow gives his low-key turn a great deal of veracity – one that’s nicely balanced by Chan, who makes up for in musical confidence what he lacks in emotional range. The whole thing is polished to a shine with soft, warm images by DOP Oliver Lau Kwan-lok (Mama’s Affair, It Remains) and a stellar score and decent title song (because duh) by Punk Chan Kwong-wing (The Storm Riders, Infernal Affairs trilogy). It’s no 友情歲月 (what’s this? “Friendship Years” or some shit?) but it lays on the film’s music layer without grating. That’s a feat in itself.