Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Zhou Xun, Eddie Peng, Wallace Huo, Deanie Ip, Tony Leung
Intro:
"...one of the most distinctive Chinese films of the year."
On the surface, it seems like Ann Hui, maverick chronicler of Hong Kong life and culture over 40 years, has succumbed to the urge to make a big blockbuster with Our Time Will Come. The film was pointedly released in mainland China on 1 July, the twentieth anniversary of the return of Hong Kong, the material – heroic resistance against the Japanese – is standard blockbuster fare for China, and the film features an all-star cast from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland.
Instead, Hui has borrowed the format of a genre tentpole for another of her singular films about Hong Kong identity. Taking the covert smuggling of cultural figures out of occupied Hong Kong as a historical reference point, Hui sweeps away the tired tropes and dogmatic stereotypes of the Chinese war movie. Our Time Will Come engages subtly with the notion of heroism, while probing how the civilians of Hong Kong were able to negotiate their lives and values with dignity in an era accompanied by the looming threat of arbitrary violence. In a key scene, a traditional wedding – forced merriment imposed almost surreally on the deprivations and shortages of war – is curtailed abruptly by a street explosion. This and other moments that are richly reflective of local life, but never in a showcase way, maintain the film’s authenticity and intimacy, despite a diffuse narrative that unfolds over several years.
Hui’s recreation of the period is aided tremendously by gorgeous production design and the fluid cinematography of Yu Lik-wai, regular collaborator of that other great Chinese director Jia Zhangke. Yu mostly keeps his camera tight, carrying the impression of a smaller and wilder, but also isolated Hong Kong. Jo Hisaishi’s score draws on the swirling, oneiric motifs that characterised his work with Studio Ghibli, providing a surprisingly fitting foil to Hui’s directorial voice. Her rapport with actors results in an impressively diverse ensemble cast; the film teems with cameos by Hong Kong stars, and in the lead role, Zhou Xun gives a career-best performance. As her mother, Deanie Ip is a uniquely authoritative screen presence, although it diminishes the performance slightly that her dialogue has been dubbed from Cantonese into Mandarin. Even bland pinup Eddie Peng delivers a reasonable performance as a gangster.
Despite its disinterest in the bombast of the genre, and the prominent space it affords (twice) to a reading of a poem by one of the cultural figures it concerns, Our Time Will Come is emphatically not a mere arthouse project. Hui intersperses the film with mock interviews with a taxi driver in the present day, played with unforced naturalism by Tony Leung, introducing an earthiness heightened by the director herself appearing on screen as the interviewer. And the final scene startlingly and effortlessly links the significance of the past to the present.
Our Time Will Come won’t be for everyone: it is too quiet and elliptical, and in denying the release expected in a war movie, it can be difficult to pin down. But in finding life in a hackneyed genre, Ann Hui has crafted one of the most distinctive Chinese films of the year.
