The ‘Road’ Home
First time director Lam Sum taps into Hong Kong anxieties for a modest working class drama.
The Narrow Road
Director: Lam Sum • Writers: Fean Chung
Starring: Louis Cheung, Angela Yuen, Patra Au, Chu Pak-hong, Tung On-na
Hong Kong • 1hr 55mins
Opens Hong Kong December 22 • IIB
Grade: B
In the opening frames of debuting director Lam Sum’s The Narrow Road | 窄路微塵 Chak (Louis Cheung Kai-chung) is sanitising a Hong Kong restaurant, one closed at 10pm in line with the city’s COVID restrictions. He’s decked out head to toe in hazmat gear, sports goggles, all capped off with a gas mask. We all saw a dude like that in a supermarket or on the MTR at various points during 2020, or early 2022, and we’re all intimately familiar with alcohol-based cleaners and “anti-viral” sprays at this point in time. And Deliveroo. So much Deliveroo. All that begs the question: Why the fuck would I want to watch a COVID movie just as it seems we’re finally, at last, maybe coming out of this?
The answer is we don’t, and fortunately neither do Lam and co-writer Fean Chung Chu-fung (who wrote Ten Years’ “Extras”). The COVID world is simply the backdrop against which Lam’s modest drama about loneliness, connection and the working class unfolds. This is a movie by Hongkongers, for Hongkongers. Anyone who’s lived here during the last 36 months is going to feel The Narrow Road. It’s not perfect, but Lam’s hopefulness in the face of uncertainty and appeal for community is endearing – and given the dourness (and often blandness) of so much local cinema lately, refreshing.
This is triggering
Cheung is proving himself a nimble and relatable leading man who can bounce from comedy (Breakout Brothers) to comedy-drama (Table for Six) to drama (Madalena), and he’s a good choice for Chak. He does worn out effortlessly, but manages to juice that with a degree of humanity that makes you like him. That’s important in The Narrow Road, given he plays a guy who sticks his neck out for a stranger – eventually a friend – despite the hazard the gesture poses to himself. That’s also what the film is essentially about: taking a moment to consider the person next to you.
Chak is a small business owner of a cleaning company, the kind that either sank or soared during COVID. He needs help, but he needs to keep it cheap if he’s going to make any kind of a profit. He hires Candy (Angela Yuen Lai-lam, Chilli Laugh Story, Hong Kong Family), a single mom with a thin grasp on parenting despite genuine and obvious adoration of her daughter, Chu (Tung On-na). She accepts his offer of $200 a gig, which goes up to $400 and then an offer of partnership once they forge a friendship. Naturally, Candy makes a fatal error at work that very nearly destroys them both.
Not poverty porn
HK’s working class hero
The Narrow Road isn’t about anything so much as it’s a portrait of people in the margins, struggling to get by. Lam started working on the story about Hong Kong’s working class scattered across the city in 2018; needless to say the next few years inspired him to rework the backdrop and change up the texture. And he does. Unfolding against a largely nighttime cityscape, cinematographer Meteor Cheung’s muted images give the film an intimate feel and brings the characters failed aspirations, disappointments and anxieties (which are myriad in Hong Kong these days) and minor successes up close. The film’s strengths are the little details that demo larger problems: When Candy can’t resist swiping a few boxes of child-sized masks she can barely hope to afford, Chak covers for her and loses a client. Later, he sees an affluent couple toss a barely worn mask on the pavement. The expression on his face says it all. The gross gamer she has to put up with at an Internet café for the sake of a paycheque, is another.
Lam considers UK kitchen sink drama filmmaker Ken Loach an influence, and Loach’s empathy for the underclasses does trickle into The Narrow Road. While not having quite the same handle on pacing as Loach and less focus on a single issue, Lam and Chung’s low-key examination of economic and emotional uncertainty, especially for people with few to zero prospects, has its equally low-key charm. It’s Cheung’s story, but Yuen and newcomer Tung have an authentic mother-daughter dynamic that propels the story’s emotional undercurrents. Yuen, in her first significant role, makes Candy frustrating, foolish, sweet, sincere, desperate and humble as the situation demands, and you can understand her thinking – even if you don’t agree with it. When she cuts corners to “help” Chak out as he deals with his sick mother, Patra Au Ka-man (Suk Suk), you want to slap some sense into her, but get where she’s coming from. The film’s final, hopeful message comes in how Chak deals with Candy’s disastrous actions. The Narrow Road is a small film about small actions, and it has its painfully earnest flashes, but it’s also a gentle reminder that COVID wasn’t the source of Chak and Candy’s struggles. — DEK