Fagara
Director: Heiward Mak
Hei-yan
Year: 2019
Rating: 8.0
It has been far
too long since I have seen a Sammi Cheng film. I missed you. As soon as I
saw her sitting at her desk, I felt nostalgic for all the films she has been
in. Hard to imagine her debut was thirty years ago and that she is nearing
fifty. Often a death knell for actresses in every film industry. She
still looks fabulous even playing a character who makes no attempt to look
glamorous and rarely gives us that Sammi smile that has charmed so many films.
Over the years she has grown so much as a singer turned actress and her performance
here cuts to the bone without a false note or being overly emotive.
This is from female director Heiward Mak
Hei-yan and it is a warm delicate poignant story of relationships between
three half-sisters and their families with their common often absent father
being both the target of their affections and resentment. Laying out the
plot can make it sound like a Hallmark film, but the script is so smart,
quiet and subtle and the acting so good, that it burrowed its way inside
me with its good-will. That the three half-sisters are from Hong Kong, Taiwan
and the Mainland would naturally make one suspect a political message within
- and perhaps there is - look what we have in common - but it certainly never
enters into the narrative in an overt way. Heiward clearly is a favorite
of the industry with Ann Hui as a producer and Andy Lau, Richie Ren and Kenny
Bee having extended cameos. I don't know where the funding came from, but
this is the sort of small intimate non-political film that Hong Kong can
still excel in. The days of the big expensive action films have likely moved
over the border from a financial perspective. A few years ago, there was
strict censorship of the films from the Mainland that made you view them
with conflicted feelings but now sadly that goes for Hong Kong films as well.
Fagara is a style of spicy hotpot and I
expect symbolic of the inclusive message of the film. Hotpot as I am sure
everyone knows is a meal to be shared, to be generous with, to have fun sitting
around a table with a big iron pot in the middle that family or friends dip
into. It is an unwritten rule that no one takes too much or takes all of
one of the ingredients. Not actually a favorite of mine but that probably
says more about me than about hotpot. Unfortunately, my girlfriend's family
always wants hotpot when we go out to dinner. I grin and bear it. And pay
for it. The heart of this film revolves around hotpot and getting it just
right. The way the father used to make it.
Acacia (Sammi) is a travel agent and gets
a call that her father (Kenny Bee) is in the hospital. By the time she gets
there, he has died. She discovers from his phone that he has two other daughters
that she knew nothing about. He got around. She texts them that he is dead
and the details of his funeral. The scene of the Taoist funeral is wonderful,
the ceremonies, the spectacle, the rituals - the two sisters arrive - and
someone lets Acacia know that her father was a Buddhist. Which in the film
is quite amusing - humor is always nearby and natural. Thinking a cockroach
might be their father reincarnated in particular. The daughter from Taiwan
is Branch (Megan Lai), a professional pool player of all things and unless
they faked it, Megan is a damn good player. The one from the Mainland is
Cherry (Li Xiaofeng), a fashion influencer on the Internet with dyed bright
red hair and a slightly punkish look. But as we discover a heart of pure
gold.
And they bond - no dramatics - Acacia is
the oldest of them and mothers them a bit. I was expecting some sort of ugly
confrontation between them at some point - it never comes. The father ran
a small restaurant in which the specialty was Fagara hotpot. They decide
to keep it open but no one knows the recipe to it. As they spend time with
one another, they piece together who their father was - they all know him
differently - at different times of his life - with a different woman - but
he begins to emerge (Kenny getting a number of small flashbacks) as a real
person and not what they expected. Other small dramas play out - Branch and
her mother (Linda Liu) - and Cherry with her grandmother who she loves so
much. Both the mother and grandmother (Estelle Wu) give remarkable performances.
I loved the grandmother - Estelle is nearly 85-years old and her debut was
in 2016! Andy is the reluctant fiancé of Acacia and Richie is a doctor
with an attraction to Acacia. It is nearly 2 hours long and moves slowly
and deliberately but it always involving and moves forward to a terrific
ending.
