Lilting

Echoes of Wong Kar Wai resonate beautifully throughout this very moving and understated, and yet very funny film. It can be viewed as a study in grief and cross-cultural misunderstanding or even prejudice. Two people try to comes to terms with the death of the person they each love the most. They are on conflicting sides of desperate love triangle. Each seeks recognition, and each needs to place their love in, an unexpected, context. Each needs to be understood.

In many Wong Kar Wai films the actors speak to each other in different languages with seeming full understanding. It suggests a disjuncture between time, place and culture, where language, usually the unifying factor within the narrative, becomes the source of each character's isolation. Lilting is self-conscious in its language play and it works powerfully to both comic and emotional effect. This has the magic effect of bending time. Locations are practically sparse, but the film gives the feeling of having moved us quite literally around the world.

The film demonstrates that with translation, there is always something essential that is lost. This might be cultural sensitivity, the feeling that we understand when, actually, we do not. Thus, it questions the assumptions we all make. It might also be the feeling that we know something or someone when actually we do not.

This may sound a heady, difficult mix. Far from it.

The film is beautifully shot, and again we experience something of the camera work of Christopher Doyle (Wong Kar Wai's leading cinematographer) in the delicate and soft palate of colours, and subtlety of framing which are as evocative as the language play in evoking mood and location. Nothing is wasted in this film. Even landmark pieces of music (another Wong motif) sit perfectly within the cross cultural narrative.

This is a film I will watch again and not simply for the references to Wong Kar Wai, It's a seamless depiction of loss in a world of seeming falling borders.

I hope you enjoy the film as much as I have.

Junn (Cheng Pei Pei) is a widowed Cambodian-Chinese woman who lives in an old peoples home in London, placed there by her only son Kai (Andrew Leung). With no other family, and having left Cambodia over 50 years ago, Junn is alone and unwilling to adapt to her surroundings or the people she's placed with.

She relies on Kai's attentions and affections, but her isolation becomes utterly complete with his unfortunate death. Junn knew that Kai lived in a house with Richard (Ben Wishaw), but Kai hadn't told her they were together as a couple. Grief-stricken himself, Richard feels duty-bound to help Junn, but they don't even share a common language let alone know much about each other.

Alan (Peter Bowles) resides at the home too and starts an unusual relationship with Junn where they talk to each other in their own languages, not really knowing what on earth the other is thinking or talking about apart from physical gestures. Richard tries to help this sweet pairing by hiring a translator in Vann (Naomi Christie), so that they can communicate with each other. Its a way in for Richard to get closer to Junn, who has her own reasons for disliking him.

'Lilting' is the debut from writer-director Hong Khaou, who shines a light on contrasting cultures in the capital. Grief is foremost in the minds of all concerned, Wishaw is wonderful as the achingly suppressed Richard, who gradually releases his grief the more he gets to know Junn, showing her just how much he loved Kai. Pei Pei plays the stoic mother perfectly, you can see the isolation, love and grief in her eyes.

In light of the subject matter, the overall mood of 'Lilting' is quite forgiving. Junn and Alan provide the most endearing moments as well as some awkwardly comical scenes especially when they confess their bad habits to each other. Dealing with such weighty issues as love, memory, language and mourning, Khaou has directed an assured and thoughtful film full of subtle releases and deeply felt emotions.

This is a gem. I wouldn't have watched it unless I had been taken. (Thank you, Beryle.) If it had been on TV, I might have watched some of it, but that is the joy of cinema. You have no distractions. I thought it might be depressing; it wasn't. I thought it wasn't my sort of film; it was. Thought-provoking.

It was easy to forget that you were watching actors. The performances were that good and very moving. It was very much like a French film.

It was interesting how much back-story was left out and yet it still worked. I asked myself a few questions because I wanted to know more. (Perhaps I felt I could help.) Where were we? (North-east London/Essex?) How long had she lived in England by depending on her husband and son for all communication with the outside world? What did people do for a living? Where did the translator come from and was she being paid? Without her son would she at last break out into the world? However I realised the back-story didn't matter. It told you all you needed to know. The nub was all that mattered: an insight into communication, memory and grief. Some things have to be said and some things are perhaps best left unsaid. The characters kept asking the translator not to translate after they had said something because they had time to see the effect it would have, (something that does not happen with a common language) but even the translator could not help but get involved.

You could speculate on a happier outcome but the final scene where she drifted back to the last meeting with her son perhaps indicated it would be a while yet before she could move on.

Very, very good.

A British guy trying to make a connection with the conservative Chinese mother of his deceased partner; the theme and the gloomy cinematography make you sad even before the story begins to unfold. Communication is the main problem over here. They somehow manage with the help of a translator, and I like how they sometimes say things and then tell the translator not to translate it (because they realise how it would sound). This leads to few funny moments occasionally.

The movie has a really good start, but after halfway through, the Director/Writer loses his way; it seemed as if he's not sure as to where to take the story. By the time it ended, I felt dissatisfied; the story should have been longer or the characters should have been explored and developed a little more.

The two leads, Ben Whishaw and Pei-pei Cheng, give quite strong and incredible performances; they have a few immensely moving scenes. And it doesn't hurt that Andrew Leung, the actor playing the deceased partner, is quite handsome; he and Ben looked quite good together, which makes his death even more painful.

The conversations the two lead characters share are quite moving and thought-provoking, and the monologue Junn has towards the end on the essence of grief and crying is really beautiful. Let me quote the most effective lines from it: "These memories are all I have; I need to keep them vivid, or they'll fade like the face of my husband. I want to dwell on these memories and cry over them because they comfort me. Through plenty of crying, I've learnt to be content that I won't always be happy, secure in my loneliness, hopeful that I'll be able to cope."

The movie is depressing, yet uplifting, but somehow I feel, it failed to reach its true potential.

Superficially speaking, the subject of LILTING resembles that of LOST IN TRANSLATION (2003), as Junn, a Cambodian Chinese mother (Pei-pei Cheng) living in London mourns the loss of her son Kai (Andrew Leung), while trying and failing to communicate with those around her. Kai's boyfriend Richard (Ben Whishaw), wants to help her, and engages the service of Vann, a translator (Naomi Christie) so that communication between himself and Junn might be improved. Meanwhile Alan (Peter Bowles), an elderly man, embarks on his own pursuit of Junn's hand.

However Hong Khaou's film looks at the difficulties of communication at a much deeper level than the purely linguistic. He invites us to reflect on the wisdom of Kai's decision to put his mother in sheltered accommodation, whose dingy décor is designed to make elderly people 'feel better.' Despite Richard's basic kindness and his protestations of endless love for Kai, we wonder whether he actually understand what either Kai or Junn actually think. Maybe it's not really necessary to hire a translator: communication between individuals can take place at a subliminal level. Vann does her best to act as an intermediary between Junn and Richard, or Junn and Alan, but it's clear that her role is a peripheral one in the drama of familial relationships across cultures.

Shot in deliberately dark colors, LILTING depicts a world whose protagonists live in perpetual isolation, both literal as well as psychological. Junn's sheltered accommodation is both dark and prison-like; her fellow-residents seldom communicate except in clichés (Alan included). Richard's apartment is full of long, brick-lined passages; his kitchen is full of dirty cutlery, suggesting a fundamental inability to cope with life.

Our relationship with the two central protagonists is a complex one. Whishaw tries his best to render Richard a sympathetic character, but the more effort he makes to try and bridge the cultural differences separating himself from Junn, the more frustrated he becomes. His final outburst, where he accuses Junn of failing to "assimilate" to contemporary British cultures, is a classic colonialist statement, leaving us to reflect on why he himself did not do more to adapt himself to her mores. By contrast Junn remains both silent and serene; her final soliloquy reveals her determination to continue her existence, despite the prospect of future loneliness. She does not need to "assimilate"; she has found her own way to negotiate the culture she inhabits.

Modestly budgeted yet memorably staged by a director with an obvious affinity for the material, LILTING is an absorbing cinematic experience.