If A GUILTY CONSCIENCE (2023) is the biggest box-office hit in HK cinema history, and likely the front-runner at next year's HKFA for Best Picture, then Time Still Turns The Pages (2023) is likely its strongest competition next spring and definitely the best HK film for the second half of 2023. The understated performance director turned actor Lo Chun-Yip brings to his role is the highlight of the film - along with Rosa Maria Velasco, one of the most under-utilized acting talents in HK cinema at the moment who is great both on stage and screen - these two manage to deliver captivating performances to the audience and be the glue that keep every scene they appear in solid, whether alone or as part of the ensemble. While singer-actor Ronald Cheng is supposed to be the main, top-bill headliner, but in every shot and every beat he acts with his fellow cast, he shows to be at least a couple of notches below them - especially in the crucial hospital scenes with Lo Chun-Yip and Rachael Leung (who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at this year's Golden Horse Awards for her strong performance as a mentally-challenged teenager in the film IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, which is constantly being compared to TIME STILL TURNS THE PAGES due to both films' social commentary-driven stories).
There are a good number of Asian films from recent years that deal with bullying, domestic abuse, and their related dysfunctions (be it society, circumstances, or family), with Koreeda Hirokazu's KAIBATSU (2023) being one of the most notable examples of late. Director Nick Cheuk, who also wrote the screenplay, knocked it out of the park with his feature film debut, and TIME STILL TURNS THE PAGES (2023) is worthy of discussion in the topic of filmic depictions of bullying, dysfunctions in parenting and the education system, in the same class as KAIBATSU (2023). As a first-time feature-film director, he had a great ensemble cast (not forgetting the key child actors, and those who were cast to play the leads' teenage versions), and behind the camera he was flanked by a great crew, including Exec Producer Derek Yee (who is also the EP for IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, the other Indy-budget film driven by a Social Commentary premise), and Meteor Cheung as DP (Cheung also was DP to IN BROAD DAYLIGHT). This is the kind of story director Koreeda Hirokazu would have loved to be able to helm, and in spite of all the rants about HK's Film industry can no longer sustain without co-prod with north-bound cross-market appeal, these films (along with the recent indy documentary TO BE CONTINUED... (2023)) really help exemplify the fighting spirit of HK movies from past to present - Producer Derek Yee proudly exclaimed that while big budget films are getting harder to finance without co-prod and cross-market selling points integrated into the film/story, low budget films are where miracles can happen - the reason why he would produce a film with an inexperienced director is so the film can benefit from the passion and innocence of these talents who don't see the hard work as just work for next to nothing in pay, and they are willing to give everything they have to make sure their story is told well, as they may not get to do it again if it fails. Whether films made in HK for the Hong Kong audience can survive remains to be seen (yet this story will definitely resonate across markets beyond north of the border), as not every one of these passion-driven projects work, but the ones that work do give us hope, and that's the fighting spirit that helped to make the mark for HK films in the past and will continue to drive Hong Kong cinema forward.
