Papa (2024) (REVIEW) | Projector Shorts | Could you forgive murder?

9 months ago

Film Brain reviews this deeply emotional Hong Kong crime drama, based on true events, that asks how do you forgive your kin when they take the rest of your family?

Transcript

00:00A father has to face the unimaginable in the Hong Kong true crime drama, Papa.

00:05Sean Lau is a restaurant owner whose world is shattered when his teenage son murders his wife and daughter.

00:11As he reels from the shock of his loss, Lau tries to connect with his son and try to find a way forward.

00:17The film was inspired by the Hung Wo Street murder in 2010, and despite the crime's notoriety,

00:22Where the Wind Blows director Philip Young treats it with a great amount of sensitivity,

00:27preferring to focus largely on the aftermath than sensationalise the incident itself.

00:32The film has a purposefully fragmented structure, intercutting the flashbacks before the murders,

00:36each focusing on a member of the family and meant to evoke the feeling of memory.

00:41Lau buys himself a digital camera to take photos of his family, reinforcing this idea,

00:45but also that these frozen happy memories miss the complexities underneath.

00:50The scenes in the past are vibrant and busy compared to the muted ones in the present,

00:54giving you a sense of how Lau's successful life has been destroyed in one senseless moment.

00:59Sean Lau gives a fantastic performance in the lead role, which is as understated as a loss of the film is.

01:06Lau has this deep well of sadness in his face, and at times is a barely functional shell of a man,

01:11and it's quietly heartbreaking as he tries to navigate everything that comes after

01:15in a world that recognises him constantly for the worst day of his life.

01:19There's only a few moments where his grief rises to the surface,

01:22like when he gets scammed by an escort or a karaoke scene, which makes them incredibly powerful.

01:28Lau's everyman makes us ask how we would react in his situation,

01:32and how would we find the strength to keep going through the darkness.

01:36Especially challenging for Lau is the meetings with his son, who is diagnosed with schizophrenia

01:41in an attempt to bridge the distance between them.

01:43While Lau at times got frustrated raising his son,

01:46who quietly struggled with his mental health before the crime,

01:49as a father he refuses to give up on him.

01:52Lau spends a lot of the film searching for a reason why his son did it,

01:56but accepting that it's an irrational act of illness is the only way they can both try to heal.

02:02This is a deeply empathetic film that slowly and thoughtfully examines what tragedy does

02:07to the ones who survive, without becoming exploitative or maudlin,

02:11and for those that have the patience, this will linger in your mind for days afterward.

Papa (2024) (REVIEW) | Projector Shorts | Could you forgive murder?

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