Movie Review: Bends/過界

A rich Hong Kong housewife (or tai tai in the local vernacular) has her life torn apart by events beyond her control.

Her chauffeur, a Mainland immigrant, wants to bring his pregnant wife to Hong Kong to have her second child.

Bends/過界 is the directorial debut of Flora Lau, and while I’m not generally fond of art films, this film stars Carina Lau.

Hong Kong movies tend to abandon actresses once they show signs of aging, and it’s really a shame because at that point many of them finally start to be decent actresses.

Carina Lau is excellent as Anna, a woman whose life suddenly goes into freefall for reasons that are never really made clear to us.

Carina Lau is rich in real life, but she’s not a housewife. What makes her performance so impressive to me is that she manages to transcend her celebrity and become her character.

Her bewilderment, fragility, and emotional shock were completely believable.

Aloys Chen Kun plays Fai, Anna’s chauffeur, in a performance that is very good.

It’s a little more difficult to overlook Chen’s movie-star good looks, especially in his scenes with the other chauffeurs, but he does an excellent job conveying the pressures his character faces, the emotions they engender, and the growing sense of desperation that drives him to do things he doesn’t want to do.

The relationship between the two characters develops very slowly, but the whole film’s pace is slow.

Normally, this can drive me crazy, but the performances, writing, and direction are so good that I didn’t mind.

It also helps that Christopher Doyle did the cinematography.

While the film is not as visually beautiful as some of his work, it’s not supposed to be, given the tone and subject of the film.

It is, however, very nice to look at and it complements the film’s impact.

While the film touches on a lot of current political issues, it doesn’t take sides, and that’s probably one of the things I admire most about the film.

It presents the audience with a set of characters and events and forces us to decide how we feel about it.

The ending of the film captures this perfectly; it may make you feel a deep sense of relief, or it may leave you astounded at the depths of human indifference.

Bends/過界 isn’t a movie for everyone, but if you enjoy well-made character studies that leave the moral choices up to you, then I can strongly recommend it.