FILMS/
AFTER THIS OUR EXILE
Fu zi
World Cinema
Hong Kong/Malaysia, 2006, 159 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Sun, Apr 29 / 02:30 / Kabuki / AFTE29K
Tue, May 1 / 08:30 / Kabuki / AFTE01K
Thu, May 3 / 12:45 / Kabuki / AFTE03K
CREDITS
- dir
-
Patrick Tam
- prod
-
Chiu Li-kuang
- scr
-
Patrick Tam, Tin Kai-Leong
- cam
-
Lee Pin Bing
- editor
-
Patrick Tam
- mus
-
Robert Ellis-Geiger
- cast
-
Aaron Kwok , Charlie Yeung, Kelly Lin, Hailu Oin, Hsu Ru-yun, Wu Jing-tao
- source
-
Vision Film Workshop Ltd., Surson Commercial Bldg., 2nd Floor, 140 Austin Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong FAX: +852-2314-7252 EMAIL: kwan725@netvigator.com
One of the leading filmmakers of the Hong Kong new wave of the early ’80s, Patrick Tam returns after a 15-year absence with his characteristic compassion and inventiveness intact. Set in 1990s Malaysia, Tam’s family drama dissects the troubled relationship between a loser father (Hong Kong superstar Aaron Kwok), who cooks in a cheap restaurant, and his son, who has the instincts of survival that his father has lost. Deserted by their wife and mother, the men drift across the thin line that divides survival from collapse. Fleeing from loan sharks, they move to a small town where the father encourages his son to rob houses, a scheme with predictably disastrous results. In contrast, the mother is now remarried and living a comfortable middle-class life. Some years later, the grown-up son returns to the place where he lost his innocence and where his future was intertwined, for better or worse, with his father’s fate. Like many filmmakers of his generation, Tam is shadowed by patriarchal complexities both on a personal level and in connotations of Hong Kong’s pre-’97 relationship with China. Tam masterly navigates the points of view of father and son to deliver a profound reflection on the split between the wisdom of maturity and the ambitions of youth.
—Roger Garcia
U.S. Premiere. Sponsored by the Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office and KTSF Channel 26.