Film Review: Girlfriends 女孩不平凡 (2025) - Hong Kong / Macau / Taiwan
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia)
I rated it 8/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
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In Tracy Choi’s tender triptych Girlfriends, time folds like memory itself—unspooling backward through a woman’s life, revealing the quiet revolutions of love, identity, and self-discovery across Macau, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. This is not a film that shouts its ambitions; it whispers them with the intimacy of a shared glance, the weight of an unspoken hand-hold, and the ache of roads not taken. At its best, it achieves a poetic resonance that lingers like the afterglow of a fading sunset over the Pearl River.
The story centers on Lok (Fish Liew), a 34-year-old Macanese filmmaker adrift in Hong Kong’s cinematic grind. Her latest project has stalled, her relationship with the pragmatic, loving Bei (Jennifer Yu) strains under the pressures of mortgages, marriage, and the seductive pull of “settling down.” What follows is a reverse-chronological journey: first to her 22-year-old self (Elizabeth Tang) as a journalism student in Taiwan, navigating youthful freedom and fragile romance; then further back to her 17-year-old incarnation (Natalie Hsu) in Macau, where first love arrives with the clumsy bravery of adolescence and the sting of idealism meeting reality.
Choi, directing with a sure yet gentle hand, structures the film as three distinct yet interconnected love stories. Each segment feels lived-in, rooted in the specific textures of its city—Macau’s dreamy naivety, Taiwan’s tentative independence, Hong Kong’s restless ambition. The performances are the film’s quiet triumph. Fish Liew carries the present-day weight with a weary authenticity that never tips into melodrama; Elizabeth Tang brings spiky, vibrant energy to the Taiwan chapter, her red hair a visual flare of rebellion; and young Natalie Hsu captures that heartbreaking blend of wonder and uncertainty in Macau. The supporting women—Jennifer Yu’s Bei chief among them—feel fully realized, never reduced to props in the protagonist’s journey. Their intimacies are portrayed with sensitivity and warmth, free of sensationalism.
What elevates Girlfriends is its refusal to force grand epiphanies. Choi understands that growth often arrives not in thunderclaps but in small, accumulated choices: the courage to reach for a hand across the dinner table, the quiet decision to keep creating amid uncertainty, the realization that “ordinary” love can coexist with an extraordinary inner life. The film’s exploration of queer experience in these Chinese-speaking contexts feels lived and specific, avoiding both exoticism and didacticism. Visually, it favors naturalistic light and fluid camerawork that mirrors emotional currents—moments of connection framed with an almost tactile closeness.
If the film has a minor shortcoming, it lies in the uneven emotional pull of its segments; the Taiwan chapter sings with youthful vitality, while the Macau sequences occasionally drift into familiar coming-of-age territory. Yet these are quibbles against a work that ultimately coheres into something deeply moving. In an era of loud blockbusters and algorithmic content, Girlfriends reminds us of cinema’s power to reflect the inner landscapes we all navigate—the push and pull between stability and selfhood, the courage required to be both “water” (in Bruce Lee’s sense) and rooted in who we are.
Tracy Choi has crafted a film that feels like a conversation with old friends, or perhaps with earlier versions of ourselves. It is not flawless, but it is honest, heartfelt, and quietly profound. In the end, Lok’s journey suggests that the most radical act may be embracing the ordinary while refusing to abandon the dream. For that, and for its luminous performances and regional soul, Girlfriends earns a strong recommendation. (Neo, 2026)