Macau-born Isabella Leong triumphs in HK film festival premiere

It’s been a long-awaited and welcome return to the movie theatre for both veteran actress, screenwriter, and director Sylvia Chang and lead actress, Macau-raised Isabella Leong in “Murmurs of the Heart”, this year’s premiere of the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Ang Lee hit-movie star Chang has not directed a film since 2012 and Leong has not made a movie since appearing in the final part of the Hollywood “Mummy” trilogy, “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor”. In between filming, Leong remained the subject of intense public interest as the mother of three Li Ka-shing grandsons, fathered by son and heir Richard Li.
“Murmurs” takes on the subject of dysfunctional families through the past and present lives of two generations. It sees lost soul Yu-mei (Leong) as an artist living in Taipei struggling to maintain a relationship with an equally lost Hsiang (Joseph Chang), who’s losing a battle to remain a professional boxing contender.
Yu-mei was cruelly separated from brother Yu-nan (Lawrence Ko) with whom she was very close when her mother took her away from their island home to the mainland of Taiwan. So a second narrative strand through the film is whether the two estranged siblings can deal with their inner demons and reconcile.
Imprisoned in the past as they are their childhood home, Green Island, a former prison island is a fittingly claustrophobic setting for the protagonists. Through a weaving of flashbacks and contemporary stories, Chang’s empathetic tale of losers seeks to reveal the tragedy of unfulfilled lives trapped in unhappy childhoods, unable to make sense of a terrible family split which saw on the one hand, brother and father, and on the other, sister and mother, separated – more, torn apart – by their mother’s decision to leave her boy behind.
Leong and Chang as the two main protagonists, the anguished artist and the boxer, produce tour de force performances evoking empathy despite their weaknesses, surprisingly in the case of fighter Hsiang, a largely unlovable cold character who is only able to connect to his real emotions when his world is falling around him.
While the acting is the film’s strongest point, the stabs at magical realism – although laudable pieces of cinematography – the underwater dream sequences come across as a little forced. The justification for these and the thread that takes us there comes from the fact that the mother used to tell them fairly tales of mermaids when they were children. The sea is used again as a metaphor for separation and works better when mother and daughter are caught in a ferry in the middle of a terrible storm where disaster looms. A pity that scene was not prolonged.
The boxing scenes are likewise very well acted and choreographed and, mercifully, lack any melodrama or over acting seen in many a boxing movie. Hsiang’s sad slide away from his fighting goals despite his best efforts in training are made more poignant by the fact that he’s an athlete who’s still smoking and drinking beer.
While the two main characters are engaging, the mother Jen (Angelika Lee Sinje) of the separated siblings has too little room to gain much of our sympathy. Neither does the brother appear enough, nor is allowed to spread his acting wings sufficiently; nevertheless competent and believable performances by both.  Robert Carroll, Hong Kong