Three Summers

Director: Lawrence Ah Mon
Screenwriters: Sylvia Chang

Institute History

  • 1993 Sundance Film Festival

Description

Three Summers brings together two of Hong Kong's best-known talents—director Lawrence Ah Man and actor/producer/screenwriter Sylvia Chang, the subject of a tribute at last fall's Toronto Festival of Festivals. Matching Ah Man's social realism with Chang's feminine sensitivity, it emerges as a gentle and affectionate story about growing up.

Set on one of Hong Kong's beautiful offshore islands, the film elegantly chronicles three summers in the life of the adolescent girl Mai-tao (Chan Shou Sha in her debut performance) before she joins her elders for a life in the big city. Each summer, Mai-tao's family rents a house to a group of urban youth, who spend their holidays learning about communal living and discovering nature. They soon become a significant part of Mai-tao's development. The shifting relationships in the group, along with the gradual changes in the environment, serve to highlight the natural process of maturing.

Tony Leung (the tormented killer in John Woo's Hard-Boiled, and the mysterious man who appears in the last five minutes of Wong Kar-wai's Days of Being Wild) gives another sterling performance as Mai-tao's older brother, A-wai, whose returns to the island are overshadowed by a secret.



Friday Jan 22 1:30 pm
Holiday Village Cinema III

Sunday Jan 31 11:30 am
Holiday Village Cinema III

$6.00

— Norman Wang

Screening Details

Credits

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