The Last Dance

The Chinese entertainment culture is not reknowned for its emotional output but occasionally out pops a movie that transcends the mainstream by a mile.

This one is such a movie and I've not seen one as good since I saw another Chinese movie, "The Shower" back in 2005.

"The Shower" has family ties and traditions as its centerpiece and has you biting your lip with heartrending scenes and I recommend that you watch it.... it's a marvellous movie.

This movie, though, goes even further and had most of the spartan audience blubbering unashamedly as the story brilliantly unfolds.(the audience spartan because the screening was at 9.50 pm on New Year's Eve.)

It starts with a middle aged, handsome and personable man falling into debt as a result of his failing "Wedding Planner" business in Hong Kong. The failure mainly because of political upheaval and the financial crisis.

He is offered a lifeline by one of his relatives and the lifeline is in the form of a partnership with an elderly, strict and irascible Daoist priest who runs a funeral business. The business follows very strictly and sincerely the ceremonies of the religion..

A clash of ideas immediately surfaces and we are treated to a tour-de-force of acting by every member of the cast, as we see how tradition faces the new world. The clash sweetly resolves into a mutual respect as they start to understand each other.

Underneath the main storyline is the family interplay of the Daoist priest, and a look into the characters of his son and his troubled daughter.

Daoist tradition will not permit a woman to conduct the ceremonies of sending the deceased to the afterlife as they are thought to be worthless. The son is only a reluctant follower to appease the wishes of his father.

The relationship between the Wedding Planner and the priest is a lovely story of adaptation and compromise while the relationship between father, son and daughter has everybody weeping in the theater at its intensity.

Some of the scenes where they embalm the deceased, especially one where they tenderly embalm a young child are almost too hard to take. But the skill of the cinematography and the gentleness of the acting lets you just about hold on.

If you can watch this movie without crying you must have a heart of stone, just a brilliant production.

Giving this an 8/10 rating

Latest from writer director Anselm Chan, and it's a topper, a proper drama about a subject that really does not get screen time. This is a great film by him and a good acting choice by Dayo Wong, who is nothing short of brilliant in everything he is in, but this performance and this role, it's a big ask and pulls it off.

A film about death nd the effects on the living, it must be handled with great care and can be a minefield, add humour and it can be a disaster, this is a almost perfect film that does this right, and there is a lesson to be learnt out of it.

Michael Hui, Michelle Wai and Pak Hon Chu are just so good and play off each other and cause Dayo Wong's character chaos. And he has plenty of that, which causes him all sorts but he grows and grows, and the last act of the film, which is the title, just finishes what is a great film off. The film is playing to packed cinemas here in London, for a good reason, it's got Dayo Wong, on top form, and I will travel to see what he is in.

This one is that kind of movies that linger in your mind, that make you think about life, that give you certain positive impacts.

The casting is great and the acting of the individuals is near perfect.

The movie is good for audience of any religious background, for audience who believe or not the last dance is meaningful for the death, for audience who has good/bad bonding with the family, for audience who is struggling for life, and even for audience who doesn't like going to cinemas.

Hong Kong movie industries have been relying too much on kungfu/gangster stories for the last 10 or even 20 years. This movie is a major break-through while in Asia Korean/Japanese movies have been dominating.

Good job!!

"Dominic" (Dayo Wong) is struggling to make ends meet, post COVID, with his business in tatters and his repayment bills at almost $13,000 per month. He's not afraid of hard work, though, so when his "Uncle Ming" (Paul Chun) offers him his share in a funeral parlour he jumps at the chance. His partner - rather sarcastically referred to as "Hello Man" (Michael Hui) comes across as a rather curmudgeonly fellow - a traditionalist Taoist priest who lives with his ambulance-driving daughter "Yuet" (Michelle Wai) and his favourite son "Ben" (Pak Hon Chu) who is attempting to follow in his father's footsteps. Thing is, in his excitement to get the job done and to make enough money to clear his debts, he makes quite a few schoolboy errors at the start that are way more lively to offend the ancestors than send them peaceably on their way to the next life, and that just irks the older man who feels his new pal is disrespectful. As the story unfolds, we follow a young man who learns a little more about a business that is really anything but. At times this is quite a funny story, with a special appearance by a full-sized, papier-mâché, yellow Maserati rather summing up the ineptness of "Dominic" as he strives for success, but that humour rather quickly evaporates leaving us with a familial drama the can be quite poignant at times as it looks at the restricting roles for women and the hereditary responsibility of sons. Given the professions of the characters, grief is never far away and we focus quiet tenderly at times at just how people come to terms with that - or not, whilst we also try to reconcile just how families themselves change from generation to generation, with some tough decisions having to be made that centre around "Ben" and his need to look forward and not back. The acting is engaging and the dialogue well written, allowing the action to do plenty of the work without subjecting us to a constant surfeit of chatter, and it handles the topic of death and the provisions we make to deal with it and it's aftermath sensitively.

I snuck into this film expecting absolutely nothing, since I was unaware of even its title. Asians dominated the crowd of 25 matinee, so I figured it was an Asian film. This was such a beautiful experience to have unfold before me. Standup comic Dayo Wong is Dominic. His wedding planning business went bust during Hong Kong Covid. But his girlfriend's retiring Uncle Ming has turned over his half stake in his funeral business to him. The other half is held by Master Man (Michael Hui), a well regarded Taoist priest. MM lives with his ambulance driver daughter Yuet (Michelle Wai) and son Ben, who is continuing the Taoist tradition. Ben in turn has a wife and son. Dom visits often. He implements a lot of wacky money making ideas. But it's also a very dramatic film. The priest performs the "breaking hell's gate" ritual, which liberates dead souls so they can move on, as he did with his own deceased wife. Women are forbidden from such jobs, and Yuet is still holding a grudge. All the characters are very well developed. There are beautiful establishing shots of Hong Kong. I was very moved by the film and there was detectable crying in the audience. I would definitely try to see it. It was first released in HK, England, then Ireland. Now the US in very limited release. Anselm Chan is a fine writer/director.