Lilting
Director: Hong Khaou
Cast: Ben Whishaw, Pei-pei Cheng, Andrew Leung
Length: 91 min
Country: UK
Lilting, the debut feature of Cambodian-born London-based director Hong Khaou, is the latest in an impressive raft of films produced with the financial backing of Film London’s Microwave scheme. Previously known for dark urban dramas such as Ben Drew’s Ill Manors and Eran Creevy’s Shifty, Khaou’s intimate and gentle film makes for a strange labelmate, but appearances are deceptive. As the title suggests, Lilting has a rhythm and an energy all of its own, and an emotional core that’s just as hard-hitting as the stories told by Drew and Creevy.
Opening both this year’s Sundance and the 28th BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, Lilting has built up a considerable amount of acclaim as it continues its journey around the festival circuit, proving that films neither have to be loud or flashy to be memorable, or have an exorbitant budget. Lilting was shot for less than £120,000, and Khaou makes every penny of that work. The film’s power comes in its delicate approach and meticulous stylistic economy, which have a beauty all of their own. Nothing here is wasted, and while it would be easy to think that such a methodical approach makes for a film that’s insular and cold, but the reverse is true. The warmth and the depth is born from characters and the interactions between them. Building on the work in his short films Summer and Spring, Khaou handles things with considerable skill, and his personal connection with the material is obvious.
A cross-cultural meditation on love and loss, the film centres on a grief-stricken Richard (Ben Whishaw), and his strained relationship with Junn (Cheng Pei-Pei), the elderly mother of his recently deceased partner Kai (Andrew Leung). Living in a nursing home, Junn is deep in mourning for her beloved son, and resents Richard for coming between them both, and Kai’s once temporary decision to ensure her safety and continued care has now become rather more permanent. In Kai’s absence, Richard takes on the mantle of Junn’s affairs, visiting her despite her hostility towards him, careful to conceal the true depth and nature of his relationship with Kai. To ease her loneliness, he recruits the services of interpreter Vann (Naomi Christie) to translate not for himself, but for Junn and fellow resident Alan (Peter Bowles) who have grown close despite not sharing any common language. As the visits progress, Vann and Richard strike up a friendship bond of their own, and she finds it increasingly difficult not to intervene when Richard is less able to contain his grief.
A film about love and care and loving and caring in spite of flaws, Lilting is delivered sympathetically without resorting to cloying sentimentality, or even a happy ending.
Using this simple framework, Khaou experiments with time and memory, presenting moments both real and imagined as he slowly reveals the two very different, but startlingly similar bond Richard and Junn held with Kai. Though the film is an expression of his tragically premature absence from their lives, Kai’s presence is everywhere in the film, down to the smallest of touches, such as Richard using chopsticks while frying a bacon sandwich-turned-olive branch for Junn when she visits the flat the two shared. Such moments stack up to make these characters more real and their suffering even more heartfelt. In a particularly effective move, we’re sometimes presented with passages of Junn and/or Vann’s dialogue untranslated, meaning English speakers in the same unenviable position as Richard. Not only does it allow us to feel closer to his predicament, but it also gives a small taste of Junn’s daily life as a transplant from another country who has never fully assimilated into its culture, making her resistance and perpetual unease without Kai (or indeed her late husband) so much more than the behaviour of a cantankerous old woman.
The performances are universally strong, and this is easily Whishaw’s best since his turn as John Keats in Jane Campion’s Bright Star, and he more than holds his own opposite the formidable force of famed Chinese actress Cheng. In support, both Bowles and Christie weave humour and lightness into a film that deals with sensitive and difficult issues. Beyond Whishaw and Cheng, the casting masterstroke is that of Andrew Leung as Kai; boyish and beautiful, there’s something almost otherworldly about him that ties in with the film’s careful, delicate aesthetic.
A film about love and care and loving and caring in spite of flaws, Lilting is delivered sympathetically without resorting to cloying sentimentality, or even a happy ending. Grief is a process and there are no easy answers, and Lilting will give its audience much to think about after the credits have rolled.
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