3.5/5 stars
An elderly lesbian loses her unmarried life partner unexpectedly and then sees her once-cordial relationship with the latter’s relatives disintegrate over inheritance issues in All Shall Be Well.
All Shall Be Well opens with a tender glimpse into the loving, 40-plus-year relationship between Angie Wang (Patra Au Ga-man) and Pat Wu (Maggie Li Lin-lin) as they prepare to welcome Pat’s older brother, Shing (Tai Bo), and his extended family to a cosy Mid-Autumn Festival dinner in their apartment.
Angie and Pat are an affluent couple thanks to Pat’s business acumen and the wealth gap between them and the working-class Shing, his wife Mei (Hui So-ying), and their two adult children, Victor (Leung Chung-hang) and Fanny (Fish Liew Chi-yu), is very clear.
While always generous with money with their relatives, Angie and Pat are inevitably the subject of much envy behind their backs – a situation they appear to be painfully oblivious to.
When Pat dies suddenly in her sleep at age 69 without leaving a will, the affection between Angie and the Wu family begins to fade, starting with the Wu’s denying Pat’s wish for a sea burial, despite Angie’s insistence, in favour of a fortune-teller’s plea to put her ashes in a columbarium based on feng shui reasons.
While their disagreements never degenerate into histrionics, Angie soon faces the prospect of being removed from her residence of over 30 years, as her unofficial in-laws take advantage of the fact her name is not on the property deed – something that would be impossible with a heterosexual marriage.
As he did in Suk Suk, Yeung is at pains to maintain that there are no bad people in his world, only those with wildly different perspectives. The Wu’s may be politely ruining Angie’s life, but they are only doing so because of how badly they’re struggling with their own financial situations, as the film takes time to show us.
A former teacher who made her film debut in her 60s with Suk Suk, Au provides the beating heart of this understated drama as a widow besieged by grief and human greed. Around her, the uniformly excellent ensemble cast playing the Wu family also render their characters’ subtle changes in attitude all the more unwatchable.