‘Borrowed Time’: Busan Review

Dir: Choy Ji. China. 2023. 93mins

Absent parents are a common trope in Chinese cinema with this recurrent emphasis on ruptured family dynamics facilitating explorations of belonging, dislocation and the struggle to establish individual identities. Focusing on a Guangzhou resident who travels to Hong Kong to find the estranged father who absconded when she was just a child, Choy Ji’s debut feature Borrowed Time weaves its own gentle path through potentially over-familiar territory. Produced under the auspices of venerable Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan, it’s an affectingly restrained rumination on severed ties which delicately blends an observational sensibility with dreamlike flourishes.

A quietly moving emotional odyssey

Borrowed Time is showing in the New Currents strand at Busan following a win for Choi at the Pingyao International Film Festival’s work in progress lab.  This is an ideal festival title which will prompt thoughtful consideration: although not an explicitly political work, its emphasis on a fractured family history that awkwardly bridges mainland China and Hong Kong nonetheless invites metaphorical readings. Beyond the festival circuit, the film’s lovely aesthetic could make it a prime acquisition prospect for speciality distributors or a platform with a keen eye for accessible art-house fare.

When we first encounter Mak Yuen-ting (Lin Dongping), she is attending a countryside gathering with her future in-laws. As they pick lychees, Yuen-ting seems entirely welcome in their company, but the manner in which she asks fiancée Ngai (Sunny Sun) not to leave her side during such occasions indicates a certain anxiety regarding family situations. Back in the city, she drops in on her mother Chau-kuen (Pan Jie), who is winding down her accountancy career.

Small talk about Yuen-ting’s impending nuptials leads to the matter of her father, who not only racked up heavy debts but actually had another family in Hong Kong. Neither daughter or former partner have had much contact with him in 30 years, although a 1995 trip to Hong Kong gave Chau-kuen the chance to watch him from a distance. Yuen-ting ends up visiting Hong Kong to find him, which also enables her to catch up with childhood friend Yuseng (Eddy Au-yeung), an anthropologist who is currently based in the city.

There are echoes of Edward Yang in Choy and screenwriter Wang Yin’s exploration of trauma within urban spaces. The film is set in late 2021, when the spread of Covid-19 in mainland China was still being kept at bay by the world’s toughest prevention measures and regular travel to/from Hong Kong had been disrupted for the best part of three years. In tandem with Yuen-ting’s inner turbulence, Choy tacitly conveys not only a sense of politely heeded stasis but the spatialised fissures caused by strict border controls. Guangzhou is a teeming metropolis that has served as a setting for numerous crime thrillers of late, but is here presented in a hushed manner with an air of uncertainty pervading the generally warm tones exquisitely created by cinematographer Shuli Huang. Tthe Hong Kong section picks up Yuen-ting while quarantining in a hotel overlooking Victoria Harbour, isolated with her thoughts during seven days of mandatory limbo.

Despite its fairly standard premise, Borrowed Time is often elliptical with the specific reason for the mid-point transition to Hong Kong left purposefully vague. Is Yuen-ting seeking closure before embarking on a new stage of her life? Or is she hoping that her father will attend the wedding so that her mother does not lose face in front of a bevy of new relatives? Whatever the reason, the reserved intensity with which Yuen-ting tries to fulfil her mission draws the viewer in. It helps that Lin imbues the protagonist with a sense of relatability and a discernible undercurrent of melancholy. She anchors the proceedings with a graceful performance which tellingly notes generational ripples as Yuen-ting’s experiences overlap with those of her mother from decades earlier.

The film’s title comes from both a turn of phrase in a letter that Yuen-ting’s father had written to her years earlier and the name of a CD from her youth that she finds while decluttering. Yet the notion of ‘borrowing time’ is best evoked through Yuen-ting and Yuseng’s reunion which occurs as Tropical Storm Lionrock brings the city to a halt. Choy subverts cliché as they share earphones to listen to that very CD, but mutes the music to dwell on facial expressions as a wave of memories come flooding back. It is a scene that also serves as a stepping stone to a lush fantastical digression which is as entrancing as it is unexpected.

Appropriately for a film in which characters wander down memory lane, old Hong Kong locations feature prominently with subtle use of shadow around the wet markets on Reclamation Street finding the past in the present. Qin Yanan’s unobtrusive editing creates the right rhythm, while Summer Lei’s lilting score provides a poignant accompaniment to this quietly moving emotional odyssey.