Myth as Reality
Patrick Leung’s sentimental journey finally gets its moment in the spotlight.
Ciao UFO
Director: Patrick Leung • Writers: Kong Hiu-yan, Amy Chin
Starring: Chui Tien-you, Charlene Choi, Wong You-nam, Michelle Wai, Ng Siu-hin
Hong Kong • 2hrs 2mins
Opens Hong Kong March 19 • IIA
Grade: B
In the mid-1980s, Wah Fu Estate in little ol’ Aberdeen was the location of multiple UFO – now “unidentified anomalous phenomena” or UAP if you please – incidents that could easily rival history’s most famous; think Roswell or Shag Harbour or Rendlesham Forest and which have passed into local urban legend. The story goes that a giant UFO hovered over the estate for five or 10 minutes and then flew away. (they always fly away). In Ciao UFO | 再見UFO, Wah Fu kids Chan Tsz-kin, Lam Hoi-yee and Ho Ka-him – plus her little brother called, erm, Little Brother – are among the witnesses to the event, which they see from the roof of their apartment block. Tsz-kin is the neglecged son of merchant marine, Hoi-yee is the resident awkward smart girl and Ka-him is managing juvenile leukemia. Little Brother is little.
Flash forward a couple of decades to 2005 and the wildly mercenary, cash-driven, global financial centre where Tsz-kin (Chui Tien-you) works a bunch of odd, get-rich-quick jobs while speculating on stocks and property (we know how well that usually works), Hoi-yee (Charlene Choi Cheuk-yin) has settled into a drab but stable accounting job and a drab but stable fiancé, Austin (Joey Leung Cho-yiu), and Ka-him (Wong You-nam) is an aggressively chipper slacker still battling cancer. Little Brother (Ng Siu-hin) is taller now, and he’s a photographer who somehow reunites the trio ahead of Hoi-yee’s unwanted wedding.
Take me!
After about a 164 years, a pandemic, and what rumour suggests is a cheap and/or cowardly investor that wouldn’t pony up to help finance a theatrical release, Patrick Leung Pak-kin’s Ciao UFO has found its way into cinemas after its initial festival bow way back in 2019. Leung is best know for horny comedies like La Brassiere, Mighty Baby and Good Times, Bed Times and he essentially took a 10-year break between a mainland romance in 2014 and a middling ViuTV series in 2024 to find his inner sentimentalist when he wedged UFO between them. And this is Hong Kong filmmaking with the nostalgia cranked all the way to 11. The thing is, writers Amy Chin Siu-wai and Kong Hiu-yan have written two distinct films that connect to each other so flimsily they’re actually a distraction to each other. One film is a coming-of-age tale about three elementary school aged kids growing up and learning to deal with hardship and the inherent unfairness of life while still finding joy where they can. Another is about three friends that grew up together, grew apart, and as adults find each other again as they find themselves dealing with disappointments, regrets and loss. Both films are valid, both are complete stories on their own. And indeed, they can connect to each other, but the vaguely science fiction elements are neither as symbolic nor as whimsical as the film wants – or needs – them to be.
What the film does have going for it is surprisingly nuanced performances from Choi, Chui and Wong, who capture resigned disillusionment perfectly, making Hoi-yee, Tsz-kin and Ka-him intensely recognisable in their flailing. Leung isn’t a stylist; he’s not a Christopher Nolan-style technician. He doesn’t bother with over-visualising the script’s ideas, and that’s fine for UFO’s old-fashioned emotional storytelling. They’re fleshed out with strong support from Rachel Leung Yung-ting as Ka-him’s exasperated girlfriend, Lo Hoi-pang as his beloved grandfather, Michelle Wai Si-nga as the happily kept woman Tsz-kin is still crushing on, and Michael Ning as Hoi-yee’s free-spirited uncle.
It also has hindsight on is side, and the added layers of meaning that injects into a story that, at its core, is about bitter disappointment and the failure of life, romance, security, home… whatever to live up to our expecations; that “follow your dreams” and “go your own way” platitudes are more often than not horse shit. It’s a subtext that’s gained signficance in the interim between the first busted release and now, making Ciao UFO feel prescient considering the events of the last few years and the passing of the city’s so-called golden years. Leung has unwittingly painted a vivid picture of a collective memory that recontextualises the city as a living urban legend of its own.