‘All Shall Be Well’ Review: A Found Family is Lost in a Tender But Tentative, Queer-Themed Grief Drama
25.02.2024 - 23:11
/ variety.com
Jessica Kiang With a title that itself feels like a soothing murmur, Hong Kong director Ray Yeung‘s “All Shall Be Well” returns to the social and lifestage milieu of his well-received 2019 later-life gay romance “Suk Suk,” and occupies a similarly melancholic, placatory register. But those hoping for a renewal, or maybe even an amping up of “Suk Suk”s restrained interrogation of internalized and externalized homophobia within Hong Kong’s economically advanced but culturally conservative middle class, may be a little disappointed. Although his fourth film revolves around a sixty-something lesbian couple, Yeung’s focus is broader, not sharper.
The disappointment will however be mild, not just because there are plenty of other plaintive insights on offer, but because everything here is mild. Angie (Patra Au Ga-man) and Pat (Maggie Li Lin-lin) have been a settled, loving couple for more than 40 years. They are now enjoying the simpler, slower pleasures of neighborhood life as older partners of such long standing that no one bats an eyelid at their non-traditional relationship.
Pat, the more gregarious one, has cannily managed the finances from the textile factory they ran together, so that they are now comfortably off, living in the home she bought three decades prior. Pat has even been able, unbeknownst to Angie, to help out two other members of their small local lesbian community with a starter loan for their now-thriving florist shop. As they bustle through a companionable breakfast-time, Angie, the quieter, less practical one, gets frustrated sending a text through an unfamiliar messaging app.
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