Film Review: Montages of a Modern Motherhood 虎毒不 (2024) - Hong Kong
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
I rated it 7.5/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½
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A Harrowing Portrait of Postpartum Despair - Six years ago, Hong Kong director Oliver Chan Siu-kuen gave us “Still Human”, a film radiating warmth and connection amidst hardship. Her return, “Montages of a Modern Motherhood”, feels like stepping from sunlight into a cramped, airless room vibrating with the relentless drone of a breast pump and the piercing cries of an infant. This is not a film about the soft-focus joys of new life. It is a stark, unflinching, and often punishing descent into the psychological and physical purgatory of early motherhood in contemporary Hong Kong, earning its place as one of the rawest depictions of the subject ever committed to film. It earns its rating not through entertainment, but through essential, brutal truth-telling.
We follow Jing (Hedwig Tam), a pastry chef whose passion and identity seem to evaporate the moment her daughter, Qingqing, arrives. What begins as the familiar terrain of sleepless nights and messy adjustments rapidly curdles into something resembling psychological horror. Chan’s direction is mercilessly deliberate. The screen is choked with stifling greys and blues; scenes fade woozily, mirroring the fractured consciousness of profound sleep deprivation. The sound design is a masterpiece of discomfort – a persistent thrum of wailing underpinned by the rhythmic, industrial drone of Jing’s failing breast pump, creating an atmosphere thick with suffocating despair.
The film belongs, utterly and completely, to Hedwig Tam. Her performance as Jing is a revelation of precise restraint. She charts the character’s disintegration not with grand hysterics, but through the subtle erosion of light in her eyes, the increasing weight in her shoulders, the quiet panic beneath exhaustion. We witness the agony of crippling mastitis, the humiliation of malfunctioning equipment, the bone-deep weariness of 24/7 caregiving with no respite. Her journey culminates in a gut-wrenching monologue, a raw confession that captures the impossible duality of motherhood – overwhelming, suffocating love coexisting with crippling isolation and despair. It’s a performance that lingers long after the credits roll; I was exhausted just watching her.
The supporting cast exists primarily to construct the suffocating "pressure cooker" of Jing's world, and they do so effectively, albeit sometimes at the expense of nuance. Lo Chun-yip portrays Wai, Jing’s husband, as the epitome of the "clueless kidult." He’s a delivery driver who believes his paycheck absolves him of domestic duty, treating basic diaper changes like Herculean labors. He’s frustratingly believable, a portrait of ingrained societal failure. Janis Pang weaponizes traditional expectation as the meddlesome, snarky mother-in-law, Mei-fung, whose undermining actions – like secretly giving formula – are a constant source of stress. Her "excellent snarkiness" makes her a potent, if perhaps one-dimensional, antagonist. Patra Au brings quiet pain to Jing’s own mother, Yung, representing the generational cycle of silent sacrifice, while Alice Fung offers fleeting, precious solace as Fanny, the sympathetic neighbor – a tiny beacon of understanding in Jing’s sea of isolation. Figures like Tai Bo’s father-in-law and Johnny Hui’s brother add to the claustrophobia of the shared family apartment, reinforcing the societal structures that leave mothers like Jing utterly stranded.
This is where the film’s power and its friction lie. “Montages of a Modern Motherhood” is fiercely committed to exposing the systemic failures and the sheer, unromanticized grind of postpartum life. It bravely critiques the collision of outdated traditions and crushing modern pressures, particularly for career women. Its realism is its greatest strength, refusing to sugarcoat the potential for joylessness and despair. Yet, this very commitment is also its potential weakness. Its perverse resolve to portray parenthood as almost entirely devoid of light can feel alienating, potentially narrowing its audience to those already initiated into this particular brand of suffering or those seeking a stark cautionary tale. Some supporting characters feel less like fully realized people and more like necessary weights designed solely to press down harder on Jing.
So, is it a great film? It is a significant one. Oliver Chan has crafted a vital, necessary work that functions as both a horrifying empathy machine for anyone who hasn’t walked this path and a grimly validating mirror for those who have. Hedwig Tam delivers a performance of such searing honesty that it demands attention. While its relentless bleakness and occasional archetypal characters prevent it from achieving the transcendent balance of Chan’s debut, “Montages of a Modern Motherhood” is undeniably powerful, important filmmaking. It’s not "fun." It’s often hard to watch. But it is essential viewing – a stark, unforgettable montage not of Hallmark moments, but of the profound, isolating struggle at the heart of modern motherhood. See it, and understand. (Neo, 2026)
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