Ray Leung’s sensitive award-winning Suk Suk, about an older gay male couple in Hong Kong, gets a counterpart of sorts in All Shall Be Well, a sympathetic drama about a middle-aged woman whose life partner dies without a will, leaving her at the mercy of her lover’s avaricious family. Lesbian-themed films are rare enough in Hong Kong (especially when they’re not catering to male heterosexual fantasies), but sapphic films about older women are uncommon the world over, which makes this an attractive offering for LGBTQ+ fests everywhere. Heartfelt and exceptionally well cast, with a welcome return to feature films by veteran actress Maggie Li Lin Lin, All Shall Be Well suffers from a predictable script and commonplace dialogue, but its Teddy Award win further guarantees niche play.
As a devoted couple for more than forty years, Angie (Patra Au Ga Man) and Pat (Li) have an easy-going, loving rapport with well-defined – and rather stereotyped – roles: long-haired Angie is the feminine one, warmly nurturing and uninvolved in the practicalities of quotidian life, while the equally convivial short-haired Pat handles the business side of things. They’re close with Pat’s side of the family, specifically her underachieving brother Shing (Tai Bo), his pinched wife Mei (Hui So Ying) and their twentysomething kids, Uber driver Victor (Leung Chung Hang) and disgruntled Fanny (Fish Liew Chi Yu), in a sexless marriage with Sum (Lai Chai Ming). Unlike Shing’s unfulfilled clan, Pat and Angie have an easy retirement and are unreserved in their generosity, delighting in the life they’ve built for themselves.
Then Pat dies one evening and Angie is understandably bereft. She also finds herself in a precarious position because Pat never completed a will, which means that Shing is the heir to his sister’s estate since same-sex partnerships have no legal standing in Hong Kong. Signs that Angie is being sidelined come swiftly: Mei takes over handling the funeral arrangements, insisting that her Feng Shui master Yu (Jimmy Wong Wa Wo) knows that a columbarium will appease Pat’s spirit despite Angie’s insistence that her lover wanted her ashes scattered at sea. Caving to the pressure, Angie is distressingly pushed to the back during the interment and shortly thereafter discovers that she has no right to stay in the apartment she’s lived in for the past three decades.
Once the premise is set up, the only question mark is whether nice but wishy-washy Victor will grow a pair and side with Angie against his parents and sister. Yeung makes sure to include a few necessary scenes with some of Angie and Pat’s friends, ensuring his protagonist isn’t entirely isolated and without emotional support, but the dialogue consistently rings false. Conversations are designed to inform the viewer, verbalizing the rapport between this loving couple rather than reproducing the kind of uncontrived, natural chit chat partners exchange after decades of being together, unencumbered by explanations. Au and Li are such fine actors that they still convey this couple’s depth of feeling, and Yeung is exceptionally good at working with his performers and trusting their instincts.
Hong Kong can be a difficult city to warm to, and the director with his d.o.p. Leung Ming Kai don’t try to prettify its congestion and architectural blandness, especially in relation to Shing’s brood, which nicely reinforces the freer and greener world that Angie and Pat, through their love and positive outlook on life, have built so carefully for themselves. All Shall Be Well is a nice film but Yeung himself seems too nice to make the uncongenial title as ironic as it should be, and while movies about this underserved demographic and the life-destroying awfulness of exclusionary, archaic laws are welcome additions to the LGBTQ+ cinema landscape, one wants just a little bit more to make it genuinely affecting.
Director: Ray Yeung
Screenplay: Ray Yeung, Stan Guingon
Cast: Patra Au Ga Man, Maggie Li Lin Lin, Tai Bo, Hui So Ying, Leung Chung Hang, Fish Liew Chi Yu, Li Lal Ha, Rachel Leung Yung Ting, Luna Shaw Mei Kwan, Gia Yu Yuk Wah, Lai Chai Ming, Jimmy Wong Wa Wo.
Producers: Michael J. Werner, Teresa Kwong, Sandy Yip, Chowee Leow
Executive producers: Ray Yeung, Stan Guingon
Co-producers: Denise Tang, Windaus Chan
Cinematography: Leung Ming Kai
Production designer: Albert Poon Yick Sum
Costume designer: Albert Poon Yick Sum
Editing: Lai Kwun Tung
Music: Veronica Lee
Sound: Tu Duun Chih, Chiang Yi Chen
Production companies: New Voice Film Productions (Hong Kong), Mise en Scene Film Production
World sales: Films Boutique
Venue: Berlinale (Panorama)
In Cantonese
93 minutes
