Honest depictions of pain and raw emotions

A number of thoughtful and thought-provoking Hong Kong-made dramas have landed on the big screen this year. Hong Kong's stalwart action genre is actively reinventing itself (Soi Cheang's Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, Albert and Herbert Leung's Stuntman) and Montages of a Modern Motherhood — Oliver Chan's much-anticipated follow-up to her debut, 2018's Still Human — is a raw and painfully honest depiction of new maternity. It's got plenty of soul.

The same is true of both first-time filmmaker Riley Yip's Blossoms under Somewhere and Philip Yung's Papa — as distinct from each other as the filmmakers themselves. Blossoms is a delicately feminist coming-of-age story pivoting on two high-school girlfriends, Ching (reality television show King Maker contestant and singer Marf Yau) and Rachel (Sheena Chan), as they navigate boys, school and a small-business ownership. Papa is a drama about cha chaan teng (tea restaurant) owner Nin (Lau Ching-wan) trying to piece his life back together after his teenaged son, Ming (newcomer Dylan So), murders Nin's daughter and wife — Ming's sister and mother.

Blossoms, quite deliberately, isn't trying to reinvent the wheel. Ching and Rachel are best friends attending the same elite girls' school, and both are earning extra cash by running their own online used-underwear business, catering to Hong Kong's fetishists. The most significant differences between them are that Rachel is effortlessly attractive to boys and comfortable around them, whereas Ching has a stutter that holds her back from casual socializing. Ching is confident, more like Rachel, from behind a phone screen but struggles when forced to interact in real life. Cleaving closely to coming-of-age convention, a boy comes between them, and there's misunderstanding and heartbreak before the young women finally reconnect.