Looking Old Age In The Eyes

I feel blessed that the excellent Chinese movie A Simple Life gets screened in AMC Theatres in Toronto, albeit long overdue. This is, of course, a movie directed and played by baby boomers -renowned Hong Kong director Ann Hui and her lead actors: Deanie Ip and Andy Lau. Ip has retired from the big screen in 2000, but her re-emerged role in this film deservingly won her the Best Actress Award at The Venice Film Festival and the Golden Horse Award in Asia.

So many film critics have already written in praise of the movie. I agree with everything they said - a masterpiece on character development; the rhythms of shared routine and intimacy that bind the lead characters; the simplicity of everyday aging life and loneliness but treated with delightful humour and exquisite little details. There's no explosive emotions or violence, but all boomers can be empathetic with the relationship between the master and the servant and the role reversal when Ah Tao suffered from a stroke - in old age, the servant becomes the served.

I was warned by a friend that I might find the movie depressing, as most of it was shot inside an old-age home. Instead, I just find the film extremely funny and nostalgic. This was the first movie in which Lau and Ip reunited on the big screen in 23 years and the two real-life godmother and godson once again remind me of how Andy Lau rose to his megastar fame - he played Ip's son in a TV cop drama when he was still a rookie actor some 35 years ago.

The movie also reminds me of my birthplace Hong Kong and all the veteran actors and directors whom I grew up with. I think this movie is best appreciated by a Cantonese-speaking audience because most of the idioms and colloquialisms would be lost on Mandarin-speaking or English-speaking audiences. This would be a great movie not only to go with boomer friends, but you should take your sons and daughters who, I hope, would learn a few valuable lessons and morals.