Review | Fly Me to the Moon movie review: Hong Kong writer Sasha Chuk makes directing debut with wistful coming-of-age drama
4/5 stars
Fly Me to the Moon is a touching coming-of-age drama about a young immigrant from mainland China who must balance her quest for happiness with the reality of living with a drug-addicted father at home – as well as being an outsider in Hong Kong.
Screenwriter, director and actress Sasha Chuk Tsz-yin has, with this adaptation of a short novel partly based on her own childhood, announced herself as an exciting new voice of Hong Kong cinema – but her serene feature debut may not readily endear her to the city’s mainstream crowd.
The film is a wistful tale of family trauma that gradually reveals a range of emotions in three acts. It opens in 1997 when Hunan native Yuen (Chloe Hui Ho-yee) moves to Hong Kong with her mother to reunite with her father, Kok-man (Wu Kang-ren), who has smuggled himself into the city years earlier.
While the kid is happy to be joined by her younger sister Kuet shortly afterwards, Yuen’s everyday life is coloured by her experiences with poverty and discrimination against migrants from mainland China. And then there is the drug addiction of her father, who is in and out of prison.
When the story picks up again in 2007, Yuen (Yoyo Tse Wing-yan) is trying to find solace in a delinquent boyfriend, while Kuet (Natalie Hsu En-yi) is doing her very best to blend in with her classmates – but neither manages to completely escape from the influence of their father.
The second half of Chuk’s film jumps forward to 2017 and sees the filmmaker play the adult Yuen, now a tour guide who indulges in casual romantic relationships. Her fractured family’s chances for a reconciliation dim with Kuet (Angela Yuen Lai-lam) in legal trouble and Kok-man’s health declining.
Despite using a relatively green cast – she herself is acting in her first full-length film – Chuk captivates her audience with a fragmented yet extremely grounded narrative. The sparse use of music before the third act also reflects the confidence that she has in her material.
The greatest compliment I can give Chuk’s film is that it does not feel like an issues movie, even if it touches upon a litany of them – from Hong Kong-China tensions to the prevalence of toxic masculinity.
Her protagonist, hurt but no less valiant, simply gets on with life in the only way she knows.
