Film Review: Once in a Blue Moon (望月) (2024) - Hong Kong
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
I rated it 7/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★ 1/2
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A Whisper of Longing in the Fluorescent Glow - Hong Kong Director Andy Lo's “Once in a Blue Moon” (望月) is not a film that arrives with fanfare. It sidles in, quiet as the hum of a convenience store refrigerator at 3 AM, and settles into the worn spaces of a Hong Kong apartment and the fluorescent-lit aisles of a 24-hour shop. This is a film of profound stillness, meticulously observing a fractured family carrying the weight of an absent patriarch. It finds its power not in dramatic confrontations, but in the eloquent silence between words, the flicker of unspoken grief in a weary gaze, and the quiet courage required simply to endure.
The story orbits Mei-zhen (Gladys Li), a young woman whose life seems measured in shifts and the clatter of the cash register. She shares a cramped apartment with her perpetually worried mother (Loletta Lee, shedding her former "goddess" image with remarkable grace) and her brother (Peter Chan, radiating bottled frustration). The absence of their father is the ghost haunting every room, a void that has calcified into unspoken burdens and secrets each carries alone. The film’s dual titles are its thesis: “望月” ("Looking at the Moon/Yearning") and “Once in a Blue Moon” speak to that rare, almost mythical hope for wholeness, a reconciliation that feels as distant and cyclical as the celestial event itself.
Gladys Li anchors the film with a performance of remarkable restraint and authenticity. Her Mei-zhen is etched with the exhaustion of a dead-end existence, her shoulders perpetually slumped under the weight of responsibility and unresolved sorrow. Yet, Li allows glimpses – a fleeting curiosity, a spark of defiance quickly dampened – of the young woman beneath the weariness. It’s a portrayal devoid of vanity, deeply relatable in its quiet struggle.
Loletta Lee delivers the film’s emotional core. Her mother is a masterclass in nuanced portrayal. Lee captures the profound weariness of a woman bound by tradition and circumstance. The love she possesses doesn't manifest in grand gestures, but in the nagging worry about meals, the resigned silence that fills the apartment, the subtle shifts in her eyes that convey decades of disappointment and steadfast, albeit weary, devotion. It’s a performance that understands the complex, often unspoken language of love in many Asian families.
Peter Chan provides crucial texture as the brother. He embodies the quiet pressure of being the ersatz "man of the house," a role ill-fitting and suffocating. Chan communicates volumes through repressed anger and sullen resignation, showing a young man equally adrift, grappling with his own thwarted desires beneath the family's collective grief.
Lo and his cinematographer excel at capturing the tangible feel of Hong Kong. The claustrophobic intimacy of the family apartment, the harsh, buzzing fluorescence of the convenience store that becomes Mei-zhen’s whole world, the rain-slicked streets bathed in neon melancholy – these aren't just settings, they are extensions of the characters' internal states. The camera lingers, often in close-up, on hands fidgeting, on faces absorbing unspoken blows, on the mundane rituals that structure their lives. This intimacy is the film’s greatest strength, forging a deep connection between the audience and these ordinary souls navigating extraordinary, quiet heartbreak.
The film's deliberate pace, its commitment to the rhythms of real, unglamorous life, is both its virtue and its potential pitfall. It demands patience. There are stretches, particularly in the meandering middle act, where the lack of a driving narrative hook might test viewers accustomed to more conventional propulsion. A subplot or two feels tantalizingly underdeveloped, leaving a slight sense of narrative drift. This isn't carelessness, but perhaps an over-commitment to the slice-of-life aesthetic that occasionally sacrifices dramatic momentum.
“Once in a Blue Moon” is a film of gentle power and resonant melancholy. It understands that the deepest grief is often carried in silence, that healing is not always about grand reunions, but about finding the courage to live alongside an absence. Andy Lo crafts a world where the ordinary becomes profound, where the flicker of hope is as rare and precious as a blue moon. It lacks fireworks, opting instead for the steady, sometimes painful, glow of emotional honesty. It’s a film that whispers its grief and lingers long after the final, quiet frame. Recommended for those who find poetry in the everyday, who cherish the humanism of films and who believe that the most powerful stories are often told not with shouts, but with sighs. (Neo, 2026)
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