Richard and Kai had been in love and living together for four years. Kai's widowed mother, Juun, although resident in England for many years, had neither assimilated in anyway nor had she acquired any ability to communicate in the English language. At one point, when relating her personal history, she explains somewhat sarcastically that five years after her husband and she had emigrated from Cambodia, "we were English."
While she is very much dependent on her son, she is supposedly unaware that he is gay and living with Richard in a relationship that is much more than a Platonic friendship. Kai places his mother in a senior home where she feels very much abandoned, betrayed and isolated. This arrangement is stressful to them all, especially because both his gay relationship and his apparent dumping of his mother in order to stay alone with Richard are at even greater odds in terms of Asian cultural expectations with regards to family. After much hesitation and worry, Kai invites his mother to come to his home to meet Richard and he plans to use this visit to "come out" to her. When he sets off to collect her from the seniors' facility and to bring her back to his home, he is killed in an accident.
Richard feels compelled to meet her and to help her find a way to get on with her life without her son to support her. He also feels that she needs to understand that Kai's death meant more to him than just the loss of a friend. Communication between Richard and Juun and between Juun and other residents of the home is virtually impossible, accentuating her isolation and further complicating Richard's desire to help her cope without Kai, as well as his wish that she understand what Kai's loss means to him.
A young woman becomes involved as a Cantonese/English translator to facilitate communication both between Richard & Juun and between Juun & Alan,a male resident of the seniors' home who wishes to develop a romantic long-term relationship with her. Obviously the translator's presence is meant to further emphasize the divide that exists between Richard and Juun as well as between Juun and everyone else.
While I understand that the difficulties of different cultures and languages between Alan and Juun were meant to even further underscore her isolation while an ever-present translator stands between them and the constantly hovering Richard floats about, it seemed that adding that complication to the mix was a somewhat heavy-handed, distracting and unnecessarily time-consuming addition to the story development.
It also seemed that Richard's character was inconsistently hesitant & often irritatingly inept most of the time, but occasionally overly angry and petulant, especially when it appeared the relationship between Juun and Alan was off. I understand that he was, in part, trying to be surrogate son in his effort to settle Juun into a life independent of her now absent son, but there might have been better ways to demonstrate Richard's frustration and despair.
It was a moving, calculated attempt to take on the complications of a man trying to juggle both a "modern" gay relationship while maintaining a traditional family relationship made all the more difficult by language & conflicting cultures, but I think it might have been better achieved with more time spent allowing us to see Richard and Kai during their relationship while they tried to come to terms with Juun as a factor in their lives. Alan could easily have been eliminated from the plot by assuming the viewer was capable of understanding Juun's isolation and dependence without having it beaten to death and dragged out to the extent that it was.
While she is very much dependent on her son, she is supposedly unaware that he is gay and living with Richard in a relationship that is much more than a Platonic friendship. Kai places his mother in a senior home where she feels very much abandoned, betrayed and isolated. This arrangement is stressful to them all, especially because both his gay relationship and his apparent dumping of his mother in order to stay alone with Richard are at even greater odds in terms of Asian cultural expectations with regards to family. After much hesitation and worry, Kai invites his mother to come to his home to meet Richard and he plans to use this visit to "come out" to her. When he sets off to collect her from the seniors' facility and to bring her back to his home, he is killed in an accident.
Richard feels compelled to meet her and to help her find a way to get on with her life without her son to support her. He also feels that she needs to understand that Kai's death meant more to him than just the loss of a friend. Communication between Richard and Juun and between Juun and other residents of the home is virtually impossible, accentuating her isolation and further complicating Richard's desire to help her cope without Kai, as well as his wish that she understand what Kai's loss means to him.
A young woman becomes involved as a Cantonese/English translator to facilitate communication both between Richard & Juun and between Juun & Alan,a male resident of the seniors' home who wishes to develop a romantic long-term relationship with her. Obviously the translator's presence is meant to further emphasize the divide that exists between Richard and Juun as well as between Juun and everyone else.
While I understand that the difficulties of different cultures and languages between Alan and Juun were meant to even further underscore her isolation while an ever-present translator stands between them and the constantly hovering Richard floats about, it seemed that adding that complication to the mix was a somewhat heavy-handed, distracting and unnecessarily time-consuming addition to the story development.
It also seemed that Richard's character was inconsistently hesitant & often irritatingly inept most of the time, but occasionally overly angry and petulant, especially when it appeared the relationship between Juun and Alan was off. I understand that he was, in part, trying to be surrogate son in his effort to settle Juun into a life independent of her now absent son, but there might have been better ways to demonstrate Richard's frustration and despair.
It was a moving, calculated attempt to take on the complications of a man trying to juggle both a "modern" gay relationship while maintaining a traditional family relationship made all the more difficult by language & conflicting cultures, but I think it might have been better achieved with more time spent allowing us to see Richard and Kai during their relationship while they tried to come to terms with Juun as a factor in their lives. Alan could easily have been eliminated from the plot by assuming the viewer was capable of understanding Juun's isolation and dependence without having it beaten to death and dragged out to the extent that it was.