Things are never what they appeared to be. This is what the movie “The way We Are” impresses me most. At the beginning of the movie, we saw Mrs. Cheung working hard at her job in the supermarket while her teenage son lazy around at home watching T.V. all day. Then we saw Mrs. Cheung back at home after work making and eating dinner with her son without much interaction between the two. That comes across as if the son is a no-good loser and Mrs. Cheung as a not caring mother, and there seems to be an enormous divide between the two. This impression is further reinforced at the son’s bible study group scene when his mentor asked how he would response to his mother if she tells him to study, to be back home early, to do chores, etc., and his answer to all those questions was a simple “Yup.”
However, it was gradually revealed that the son is a quiet, obedient and self-disciplined child. That he is lazing around the apartment is because he is unable to find a job to preoccupy himself during his summer break while awaiting his HKCEE results. When his grandmother is hospitalized, he goes to visit her everyday and turns down invitations from his friends to go out. He is not embarrassed to let his friends know that he would rather go home to be with his mother on mid-Autumn festival than to fool around with them. Also, whenever and whatever his mother asks him to do, he will do it without any objections or hesitations.
Mrs. Cheung, on the other hand, turns out to be a very compassionate and loving person. Her husband has passed away quite a while ago already—long enough that her son can’t remember whether his father was slim or fat. Yet she continues to keep her husband’s jeans in the drawer as if he has not left them. When she finally throws her husband’s old pair of jeans out, she breaks down in tears. We also learn that she is a selfless person and that in the past she supported her now successful brothers’ studies overseas. Mrs. Cheung’s compassion also extends beyond her immediate family. She and her son befriend her elderly co-worker. They help her carry a T.V. set home, do grocery shopping together, and change a light bulb for her apartment. Mrs. Cheung even accompanies her elderly co-worker on a trip to Shartin to have tea with her co-worker’s son-in-law.
Her co-worker is a lonely elderly woman. Her only daughter passed away some time ago and her former son-in-law remarried another woman. The elderly co-worker misses her grandchild, but is prevented by the former son-in-law and his new wife from having any relationship with her grandchild. Mrs. Cheung and her son’s friendship brighten up the elderly woman’s otherwise mundane, meaningless life.
Throughout the movie there is an undercurrent of loneliness--the loneliness of Mrs. Cheung without her husband; the loneliness of her son without a girlfriend or close friend; and the loneliness of her co-worker without her daughter and grandchild.
Counter-balancing this is perhaps the compassion of the characters, especially that of Mrs. Cheung, her son and her elderly co-worker. Even her brothers turn out to be loving and compassionate characters. One of her brothers tell her son that they will support his overseas studies if he could not get promoted to Form Six—a sort of repaying their gratitude for Mrs. Cheung’s support of their overseas studies in the past.
“The Way We Are” set in the background of Tin Shui Wai is about the lives of average people. A town built on reclamation land by the government in the 1990s, which earned its nickname “The City of Sadness” through a series of media coverage of widespread unemployment, organized crimes, domestic violence, and tragic suicides. Just as the feeling of loneliness that seep through the movie, it is a portrait of the way average working people go about their lives copying with their sorrows, tragedies and disappointments both individually and collectively. It is a rare gem out of Hong Kong cinemas and deservingly garnered a number of awards at film festivals.
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