First impressions of LILTING

The fabulous Cheng Pei Pei

Yesterday afternoon I went to a pre-release screening of Lilting at the Directors Guild Theater on West 57th Street in Manhattan. It's a remarkable film about love, loss, and memory, and a most auspicious debut for British-Cambodian writer-director Hong Khaou.

Cheng Pei Pei (Come Drink with Me; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) stars as Junn, a Cambodian/Chinese woman living in a home for the elderly in London. She'd been put there, with the expectation that it would only be temporary, by her son Kai (Andrew Leung). Junn, despite living in England for many years, has never learned to speak English and is, for all intents and purposes, totally unassimilated. Her situation is compounded because her son, who unbeknownst to her was gay, has died in an accident. Richard (Ben Whishaw), Kai's lover, visits her and tries to help her adjust to her situation, while keeping secret the real nature of his relationship with Kai.

I had hoped that the film would be pretty good or at least decent -- mainly because I'm such a fan of Cheng Pei Pei -- but I was blown away but how incredibly touching and powerful it was. All the actors were very good, but Cheng Pei Pei was incredible. Frankly, she deserves serious consideration for an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. She conveys so much with a look, a facial gesture, and her posture that one can get a strong sense of what she's saying -- always in Chinese -- without even reading the subtitles.

The film, distributed by Strand Releasing, is scheduled to open in New York on Friday, September 26 (at the Village East Cinema) and in Los Angeles on Friday, October 3 (at the Sundance Sunset Cinema and Laemmle’s Playhouse), followed by a national roll out.

I'll have a more complete review here at AsianCineFest on or just before the September 26th opening in NY.

LILTING to open in NY on September 26th with national roll out to follow

Lilting

Directed by Hong Khaou

Starring Ben Whishaw, Leila Wong, Morven Christie, and Cheng Pei-pei

United Kingdom, 2014, 86 minutes

"Delicate… hauntingly sexy and even humorous at times, this debut ... wears its stylistic debt to In the Mood for Love on its elegant sleeve… the gentle study of

loss builds quiet emotional power.” - David Rooney, Variety 

British-Cambodian writer-director Hong Khaou's poignant feature film debut, Lilting, winner of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival's Best Cinematography Award, and scheduled to open in New York on Friday, September 26 (at the Angelika Film Center) and in Los Angeles on Friday, October 3 (at the Sundance Sunset Cinema and Laemmle’s Playhouse) followed by a national roll out.

Lilting takes place in contemporary London and features intensely moving performances by Asian cinema’s martial arts legend Cheng Pei Pei (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) as Junn, a Cambodian-Chinese mother grieving the untimely death of her only son Kai (Andrew Leung), and Ben Whishaw (I’m Not There, Bright Star) as her son's lover, Richard.

Set in her old-fashioned ways and not fully adjusted to the foreign culture she lives in, the mother’s fragile world is suddenly disrupted by the presence of a stranger (Whishaw) whose attempts to communicate are first met with rejection and distrust. Although they don’t share a common language, Vann (Naomi Christie), a young translator hired by Richard, helps piece together the tender memories of the man they both loved, and the two strangers gradually learn to develop a bond with each other. Vann also helps Junn go through the somewhat comical courtship of a smitten English gentleman. Graceful, moving and humorous, Lilting is a gem of a chamber piece about unlikely connections and how loss can bring us together even when cultures and generations set us far apart from one another.

Prior to Lilting, 38 year-old Hong Khaou wrote and directed two short films, which were selected for the Berlin and Sundance Film Festival. In 2013, he was named one of Screen International’s "Stars of Tomorrow", and in 2014, he won the Sundance Institute/Mahinddra Global Filmmaking Award – supporting a new generation of storytellers – for his screenplay Monsoon. Khaou was selected for this Summer’s Sundance Lab for his next project.