Still Human

沦落人

Hong Kong, 2018, colour, 1.85:1, 111 mins.

Director: Chen Xiaojuan 陈小娟.

Rating: 8/10.

A beautifully observed heart-warmer about a grumpy Hong Kong invalid and his Filipina carer.

STORY

Hong Kong, the present day. Summer. Liang Changrong (Huang Qiusheng) is a rambunctious divorcee who is paralysed from the waist down following an accident and lives alone in a small flat in a public housing estate. His latest carer – of many – is a Filipina, Evelyn Santos (Crisel Consunji), who cannot speak Cantonese, so has to use a translation app to communicate, as Liang Changrong’s English is limited. He can move his hands but spends all his time in a wheelchair, so she has to feed, clean, massage, help him with the toilet, and shop for him. She gets Sundays off – when she meets fellow Filipinas Ann (Xyza Cada), Loma (Lucy Navarrete Valenzuela) and Rhea (Marie M. Cornelio), also migrant workers – and is in the middle of a divorce back home which is using up all her money. When she is out on Sunday, Liang Changrong’s friend Zhang Hui (Li Canchen) comes round for a marathon porn session on DVD. Autumn. Liang Changrong communicates by Skype with his son elder Wang Junxian (Huang Dingqian) and ex-wife (Huang Suhuan) in New York, where the former is studying medicine and the latter has remarried. Wang Junxian asks his father to come over for his graduation next May. By now, Liang Changrong and Evelyn Santos are communicating quite smoothly in a mixture of Cantonese and English, and he is less grumpy. When he falls out of bed one night, he deliberately doesn’t call her for help as she’s asleep; she tells him it’s her job. He decides to buy her a camera for her birthday as her dream is to be a photographer. Winter. His sour younger sister, Liang Jingying (Ye Tong), comes round for a Chinese New Year meal but insists Evelyn Santos eats in the kitchen. She quickly leaves when she sees her brother is not happy with the idea. Liang Changrong encourages Evelyn Santos to develop her interest in photography, and not put her dream on hold. Later, Evelyn Santos hears her marriage annulment has finally come through, and she celebrates with her friends. When Evelyn Santos falls down one day and breaks her left arm, she temporarily ends up an invalid like Liang Changrong. Spring. He accompanies her to an awards ceremony, where she’s won a Special Mention for her photo of him, entitled The Dream Giver. She subsequently gets an offer to study in the UK, but is loath to be parted from Liang Changrong, to whom she has become devoted. However, he urges her to go. Summer. It’s now a year since the two first met at the same bus stop.

REVIEW

Anglo-Chinese actor Huang Qiusheng 黄秋生 [Anthony Wong] gives one of the best performances of his long career in low-budget heart-warmer Still Human 沦落人, a touching and beautifully observed two-hander about a grumpy wheelchair victim and his impoverished Filipina carer. It’s an impressive feature debut by Hong Kong-born writer-director Chen Xiaojuan 陈小娟, 32, who had a brief stint in the banking industry prior to her 25-minute short Children 儿女 (2015), a love story between two Christians. For Huang, 58, who reportedly took no fee, it’s one of his finest roles in a career stretching back over 30 years and mostly playing bad guys; for his co-star, Manila-born Crisel Consunji, 35, it’s a gift at the start of her career. Unreleased in the Mainland, it still ended up grossing six times its reported budget of HK$3.25 million on home turf, thanks to local awards and good word-of-mouth.

For Huang, 58, whose career has dwindled since being blacklisted in the Mainland for voicing support for the 2014 Umbrella Movement, it was something of a mini-renaissance. (He subsequently had a supporting role in Hong Kong tenement comedy A Home with a View 家和万事惊, 2019, but remains effectively unemployable by the mainstream industry.) It was also at the time a feather in the hat of creative producer 监制 Chen Guo 陈果 [Fruit Chan], 61, whose star had been somewhat dim since Kill Time 谋杀似水年华 (2016), a multi-layered, China-set murder mystery, starring Yang Ying 杨颖 [Angelababy] and Taiwan’s Ruan Jingtian 阮经天, that unfortunately flopped in the Mainland with a mere RMB3.5 million. (Chen’s subsequent feature, Invincible Dragon 九龙不败, a wannabe mainstream crime-action movie starring Mainland martial artist Zhang Jin 张晋, was shot in late 2016/early 2017 but sat on the shelf for over two years before also crashing on release, in mid-2019, with only RMB19 million.)

Still Human, made after Dragon but released before, plays much more to Chen’s strengths as a veteran indie film-maker but without the quirky elements of productions he’s directed himself. Chen Xiaojuan’s script is simplicity itself, a year in the life of an odd couple thrown together by mutual need (he needs a carer to do virtually everything, she needs the money as she goes through a divorce back home). Segmented into four seasonal chapters, with a coda set again in the summer, it’s essentially a platonic love story, elegantly told, as a wheelchair-bound grouch, divorced and lonely, finds compassion again for his fellow humans, and a kindly foreign worker, almost alone in an unfamiliar society, has her lack of self-confidence boosted by the invalid’s help.

Part of the film’s attraction is the way in which each character is shown to draw strength from the other in an incremental way, without any grandstanding or social pleading. What so easily could have been just a showy vehicle for Huang’s gruff talents becomes a genuine two-handed comedy-drama, with Huang’s performance avoiding self-pity and Consunji blending warmth and strength. It’s one of those films in which – like, say, SoulMate 七月与安生 (2016), with Mainland actresses Zhou Dongyu 周冬雨 and Ma Sichun 马思纯 – it’s impossible to separate the two lead performances. And part of that is equally down to the script and direction by Chen, which doesn’t put a foot wrong and abounds in small, lovely moments. Cleverly scaling back his real-life command of the language to the level of pidgin English, Huang gives a performance that’s immensely subtle, especially in the second half where he’s clearly lost his heart to the carer but realises she has a future of her own. Consunji is equally good here, keen to follow her dream to be a photographer but loath to give up the man who’s given her a chance in life.

Supporting performances, featuring several well-known faces, are neatly blended: Li Canchen 李璨琛 [Sam Lee], a veteran of Chen Guo’s earliest films, and now well past playing Cantonese punks, here as the invalid’s pal; fellow veteran Ye Tong 叶童 [Cecilia Yip] as the jealous younger sister; and Chen himself cameoing as a foodstall owner near the end. Technical credits, largely by first-timers, are unshowy but professional, with a real feel for everyday Hong Kong life and less glossy than Chen Xiaojuan’s short Children. (The film shot around the same housing estate in which the director grew up.) The Chinese title means “Drifters” or “Vagabonds”, in the sense of people who have fallen down a rung in life.

CREDITS

Presented by Golden Scene (HK), Film Development Fund (HK), Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (HK). Produced by No Ceiling Film (HK).

Script: Chen Xiaojuan. Photography: Xiao Qinghua. Editing: Chen Xiaojuan, He Junqian. Music: Zou Fangning. Art direction: Liu Xuejun. Costume design: Wu Huijuan. Styling advice: Wen Nianzhong [Man Lim-chung]. Sound: Chen Qiyi, Nie Jirong, Chen Zhiyang. Visual effects: Chen Ziqian, Ma Zhuo’er (Puppet Studios).

Cast: Huang Qiusheng [Anthony Wong] (Liang Changrong), Crisel Consunji (Evelyn Santos), Li Canchen [Sam Lee] (Zhang Hui), Ye Tong [Cecilia Yip] (Liang Jingying, Liang Changrong’s younger sister), Huang Dingqian (Wang Junxian, Liang Chgangrong’s elder son), Chen Guo [Fruit Chan] (Qiang, food-stall owner), Lucy Navarrete Valenzuela (Loma), Xyza Cada (Ann), Marie M. Cornelio (Rhea), Vinia Pamplona Peralta (Carmen Lumaban), Myriam Khadraoui (Cassandra), Huang Suhuan (Liang Changrong’s ex-wife), Han Lei (Wang Hong), He Mingying (Zhang Hui’s mother), Tan Tianbao (market grocer).

Premiere: Hong Kong Asian Film Festival (Co-Opening Film), 6 Nov 2018.

Release: Hong Kong, 11 Apr 2019.