"Directed by Patrick Leung, this affecting saga from Hong Kong is a bit tricksy to get to grips with because it keeps hopping back and forth between an assortment of time frames. It tracks a set of characters as children in the mid-1980s, played by one group of young actors, and then later in the 1990s and early 00s when an adult cast takes over. But as it spirals in towards its surprising and dramatic conclusion, everything falls into place and the last 10 minutes is properly tear-jerking even if it's unabashedly sentimental, like a classic melodrama."
"In 1985, a quartet of kids growing up on a working-class Hong Kong housing estate boys Kin (Matthew Wong Cheuk-yin) and Heem (Chui Ka-him), and girl Hoyi (Lam Seung-yu) and her kid brother (Shawn Heung Sung-yu), for ever called Little Brother see a UFO in the sky one night. The experience bonds them for ever, even if each kid grows up to pursue goals one wouldn't expect based on what they're like as tots."
"Sailor's son Kin (played by Chui Tien-you as an adult) pursues wealth in the stock market as it booms in the aftermath of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China, itself an understandably big deal in the story. Heem (a very engaging Wong You-nam) had leukaemia as a child, and lives constantly in the short term under the shadow of illness. Hoyi, who everyone describes as a pudgy little girl, grows up to be a slim-hipped beauty (Charlene Choi Cheuk-yin) this is considered a great achievement along with becoming an accountant and planning to marry a dullard named Austin (Joey Cho Yiu Leung) who has his life all planned out."
"What's interesting is that despite the spaceship stuff this isn't in the slightest a sci-fi film. It's really a straight-up multi-stranded realist drama where the city itself, evolving and changing throughout, is one of the characters. There are lots of colourful secondary figures,"
A Hong Kong story follows four children on a working-class housing estate who see a UFO in 1985, forming a lifelong bond. The narrative shifts between their childhoods and their adult lives in the 1990s and early 2000s, with different casts portraying the same characters. Kin grows into a stock-market-driven pursuit of wealth after the 1997 handover, while Heem lives under the ongoing shadow of childhood leukemia. Hoyi becomes a slim beauty, achieves stability through an accounting career, and plans marriage with a predictable partner. The city’s changing landscape functions as a major presence, and the plot converges toward a dramatic, emotional conclusion.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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