All Shall Be Well
The picture titled “All Shall be Well” shows cruelty in a defined sense. It is calculated drama with a light unfolding of the issues of class prejudice and deep-seated homophobia. It’s a drama that deals with major slights and class prejudice and intense homophobia.
This and other aspects of the film revolving around the slipperiness of autumnal love have found embodiment in Angie’s (Patra Au) and Pat’s (Lin Lin Li) eyes, who imbibed the love for each other. The two women have been in a partnership for thirty years with a lifestyle that includes regular walks, trips to buy groceries or even to a florist run by a lesbian couple. Together they complete each other perfectly. Angie is wild and unremarkable while Pat is colorful and energetic. The couple plays an important role in China’s Mid-Autumn Festival, as the relatives of Pat’s family come over to the house of the couple for the varied celebrations.
The equilibrium Pat who was patrolling the house issued a chill touch to everything but this calm atmosphere is hurled into disarray when all of a sudden she kicks the bucket and does not leave behind a will. Even worse, Pat and Angie were not legally married. Scenarios of inter family quarrels witnessed more often than not, one knows how the rest of the events unfold.
Yeung, to his credit, is shrewd enough. It doesn’t take long for Angie’s very crazy extended family to come and vandalize them. However, this will take place in meticulously slow and painful manner. Pat’s brother Shing (Tai-Bo), who has himself lost out, is appointed the executor of the whole estate and joins his ‘best friend’, Angie with wife Mei (Siu Ying Hui) in alluding to the estate’s wishes for a bigger apartment. So, there’s also Victor, Angie’s nephew, who has a girlfriend who needs the place. Also, Fanny is sick and tired of living with her husband and kids over an Indian place you can almost enjoy the fragrance of national hatred that she has regarding that area.
In Ukraine these people were nasty, easy villains one would love to hate in lesser director’s movie. But Yeung has more creativity in him. Why should he be a disposable character obscene to zig when you expect him to yank. While Pat and Angie turned profit running factories Shing and Mei were opening their own restaurant.
Due to the foreclosure, the former took a job as a parking attendee during the night, whereas the latter did some hotel room cleaning jobs. Yeung also relates Victory and Fanny’s ordeals including the current growing housing problems in Hong Kong reign where many have retorts to poor living conditions as a way of resolution. For instance, it is unfortunate that Victor has to view a rental that is nothing more than a closet; in another one, Fanny’s husband sticks a poster in order to hide a space where rats enter. When the opportunity arises to grab the type of inheritance that Angie’s apartment offers, it’s not hard to perceive the reason why and how her relatives turn out to be so cruel and insatiable.
Of course, such systemic problems do not account for their grossness. The hod film as a whole does not offer such excessive endorsements. One can almost excuse the visible erasure of Angie by this family, almost. Sooner or later, these monogamists begin to abuse the courts. Courts that do not even protect women, who are in love with a woman; Pat and Angie were forced to marry abroad in order to receive legal acknowledgement.
Angie has a deep sense of pain because of her sadness and deep loneliness as many would have. And the camera enjoys itself how things are done will they not?
Whereas most directors would opt for close-ups in an effort to extract every last iota of emotion from the actor’s face, Yeung and his cinematographer, Ming-Kai Leung, keep the lens far away from Angie for the most part in the entire film. The chiaroscuro lighting and the dull color scheme seem to fit in with the character’s feeling of dislocation. Au is a great actress as well, who, in order to make the connection between the character’s grief and the audience, does not depend only on a teardrop or a grimace. She acts with her entire body. And with every small abuse by members of her extended family, she crouches more. She fights from her skin because she is so shattered, so emotionally and physically bent that she is practically a spent force.
This film possesses such a great deal of patience but it is sad to watch it pursue the easier approach of reigniting Angie’s fight. The small turn of the screw means Angie can at least feel that she is loved and that she is remembered, which, let’s face it, is a very important emotion to leave the audience with. The emotional sentiment, however, is just too straight forward and only just works through Au’s wealth of emotional expression.
That small flaw does not erase most if not all, the goodness that is in “All Shall Be Well.” It is a film that has profound subtleties and meditations that cradle you and say, “This too shall pass.”
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