Film Review: Voyage 遊 (2013) - Hong Kong
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
I rated it 6.5/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★
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There is a quiet courage in films that stare directly into the abyss of depression and suicide without flinching or offering easy comforts. “Voyage,” the 2013 feature from Hong Kong director Scud, possesses that courage in abundance. It is not always easy to watch, nor is it always successful in its ambitions, but it lingers in the mind like the aftermath of a long, solitary journey at sea—beautiful in moments, meandering in others, and fundamentally honest about the weight of human sorrow.
The film follows a young psychiatrist, played with a certain wounded introspection by Ryo van Kooten, who sets sail alone from Hong Kong along the coasts of Southeast Asia. Overwhelmed by the suicides of his patients and his own deepening melancholy, he records their stories as a way of processing loss, fate, and the thin line between endurance and surrender. The structure is less a traditional narrative than a series of interconnected vignettes—fragments of lives cut short, moments of intimacy, despair, and fleeting transcendence.
Scud, who has built a career on provocative, boundary-testing cinema, here turns his lens toward broader existential questions, though his signature elements of full-frontal nudity and raw physicality remain.
What impresses most is the film’s visual poetry. The sea becomes both setting and metaphor: vast, indifferent, yet capable of moments of startling beauty under saturated skies. Scud’s camera lingers on bodies not merely for titillation (though there is that), but as vessels carrying the soul’s burdens—fragile, exposed, searching for connection. In its strongest passages, “Voyage” achieves a kind of meditative grace, asking whether belief in an afterlife, or simply the act of bearing witness, can make the struggle worthwhile.
Yet the film struggles under the weight of its own fragmentation. Some vignettes land with emotional force; others feel undercooked or overly symbolic, drifting into pretension. The connections between stories can seem tenuous, and the pacing occasionally tests patience, as if Scud is so determined to honor the messiness of grief that he resists shaping it into something more cohesive. Van Kooten’s mixed performance anchors the frame, but the supporting players vary in impact, with some episodes shining brighter than others.
This is not a film for everyone. Those seeking tidy resolutions or conventional storytelling may find it frustrating. But for viewers willing to embark on its uneasy passage, “Voyage” offers something rare: a sincere, if imperfect, confrontation with the darkness many prefer to keep at bay. Scud has made a deeply personal work here, one that respects the complexity of mental suffering without cheap exploitation.
In the end, I give “Voyage” a measured recommendation. It is ambitious and flawed in equal measure—much like the human spirits it portrays. It earns its place not as a masterpiece, but as a thoughtful companion for anyone who has ever wondered, while gazing at the horizon, whether to keep sailing or let the waves take them. (Neo, 2026)