Lilting | Little White Lies

Lilt­ing

07 Aug 2014 / Released: 08 Aug 2014

Words by Sophie Ivan

Directed by Hong Khaou

Starring Ben Whishaw

A smiling woman in a dark coat and a bearded man in a green jacket walking together along a canal.
A smiling woman in a dark coat and a bearded man in a green jacket walking together along a canal.
3

Anticipation.

Funded by Microwave, Film London’s scheme for first-time filmmakers — definitely worth a look.

3

Enjoyment.

A thoughtful film whose lilting tones occasionally border on the listless.

4

In Retrospect.

Admired from a distance, this is a promising debut from Hong Khaou.

Hong Khaou’s debut fea­ture is a hushed essay on cop­ing with grief, sex­u­al­i­ty and the cultural/​generational divide.

Do you know how it feels to be locked up by your own son, like a pet?” This is the accu­sa­tion admin­is­tered by an elder­ly moth­er to her only child ear­ly on in direc­tor Hong Khaou’s Lilt­ing, a dis­tinc­tive and heart­felt debut feature.

Audi­ence mem­bers not flu­ent in Man­darin will read her words in sub­ti­tles, since Junn, the moth­er in ques­tion (played by famed Chi­nese actress Cheng Pei-pei), despite hav­ing moved to Lon­don decades ago, has nev­er mas­tered Eng­lish. She has, how­ev­er, man­aged the odd F‑word. Her son, Kai, torn between fil­ial duty and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of reveal­ing that Richard (Ben Whishaw), the best friend” that he lives with, is more than just that, has opt­ed to place his wid­owed moth­er in the most pleas­ant care home he could find, rather than take her under his own roof.

We soon realise that these ear­ly scenes lie some­where between flash­back and height­ened mem­o­ry; for Kai has died sud­den­ly, leav­ing both Junn and Richard reel­ing at the loss of the per­son they both love the most. Richard, in an effort to come to terms with the tragedy (and to main­tain his only liv­ing link with Kai) begins vis­it­ing the reluc­tant Junn, and even hires a trans­la­tor to facil­i­tate a late-autumn courtship between her and an Eng­lish co-resident.

So begins a ten­ta­tive, del­i­cate dance between Junn and Richard, who con­tin­ues to tip-toe around the true nature of his rela­tion­ship with Kai. It’s very much a case of one step for­wards, two steps back, as Richard does his best to respect the fact that — bereft of her fam­i­ly and her native cul­ture — Junn’s grief is the most pre­cious thing she has left.

Age­ing, bereave­ment, prej­u­dice, social dis­lo­ca­tion, lan­guage bar­ri­ers — Khaou mesh­es togeth­er an ambi­tious selec­tion of themes, and his suc­cess belies the film’s sim­ple set-up and under­stat­ed tone. The flash­back-heavy struc­ture, aid­ed by Stu­art Earl’s ghost­ly, ambi­ent score, cre­ates a dream­like, almost atem­po­ral atmos­phere. Yet Khaou seems so con­cerned with emo­tion­al land­scapes over nar­ra­tive momen­tum that at times the film risks sim­ply dis­solv­ing into nothing.

That said, he com­mits to his aes­thet­ic with great con­vic­tion. As with the sound­track, Miren Marañón’s ele­gant, faint­ly triply pro­duc­tion design (Junn’s care home is steeped in retro décor, sup­pos­ed­ly designed to make its elder­ly inhab­i­tants feel more at ease) and Urszu­la Pontikos’s fine cin­e­matog­ra­phy (fol­low­ing her recent stand-out work on Week­end, by anoth­er emerg­ing Brit tal­ent, Andrew Haigh) lend the film a frag­ile beau­ty per­fect­ly attuned to its sub­ject matter.

To leav­en the inten­si­ty, there are also frag­ments of gen­tle com­e­dy in watch­ing Junn and her gen­tle­man friend come to realise that some­times sweet noth­ings sound bet­ter left in for­eign tongues. There are also ten­der obser­va­tion­al details — like how Richard, hav­ing picked up Kai’s habits, not only cooks his bacon with chop­sticks, but can’t remem­ber how he ever man­aged a fry-up with­out them. Clear­ly a pas­sion project for Khaou, Lilt­ing is a lov­ing­ly com­posed mood piece, just not one that ever ful­ly achieves dra­mat­ic lift-off.

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