‘Fly Me To The Moon’: Tokyo Review

Dir/scr: Sasha Chuk. Hong Kong. 2023. 113mins

The sins of a father leave their mark on his daughters in this affecting, unexpectedly hard-edged domestic saga. The debut feature film from Sasha Chuk, who also stars as the adult Yuen, the older of the two girls, Fly Me To The Moon spans two decades, starting with the girls’ arrival in Hong Kong from Hunan in mainland China as young children in 1997. The hope of a new start for the fractured family is dashed by their father’s drug addiction and criminal inclinations, and their mother’s perpetual state of disappointment and anger. The film rejoins the family in 2007 and again in 2017, exploring the impact on both sisters, and the bond between them.

Affecting, unexpectedly hard-edged domestic saga

It is an accomplished first feature from Chuk, who adapted the screenplay from her own novel, and it is a project that comes with a degree of buzz, having previously won a record five work-in-progress awards at the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF21). The picture is likely to be a title of interest for further festivals – following on from its premiere in Tokyo, the film takes the closing night slot in the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival – and marks Chuk out as a name to watch with interest.

From the outset, Chuk evocatively taps into the child’s perspective on an unfamiliar world. Sitting with her mother on the pavement, surrounded by a life’s possessions crammed into suitcases and cardboard boxes, the young Yuen (Chloe Hui) doesn’t look up at the city around her. She gazes at the feet of the strangers on the streets of Hong Kong, all clad in expensively pristine white trainers. It is a world away from rural mainland China. Her father’s (Wu Kang-ren) sneakers are equally spotless and box-fresh, but it doesn’t take long for the shine to tarnish on the father-daughter relationship. Home from primary school, she catches him chasing the dragon and folding in on himself, slumped in the tiny bedroom that the family shares.

The use of the film’s locations is eloquent throughout, but nowhere more than this airless, overcrowded two room apartment This cramped space, its every surface hung with clothes and scattered with possessions, gives us an instant reading on the state of the family – it’s not the kind of place in which secrets are easily guarded. When the family is together and harmonious, the space is filled with good cheer. But when the teenage Yuen (Yoyo Tse), inspired by her father’s light-fingered tendencies, steals a dress, her sister Kuet (played as a teenager by Natalie Hsu) immediately suspects. And when the father, suffering from heroin withdrawal, weeps and hopes for death, the girls can do nothing but silently watch his shame and sickness.

Chuk’s use of music, particularly a mournful solo piano refrain, is the one slightly jarring element. It is an overly sentimental score that feels as if it would be better suited as the backdrop of a romantic made-for-TV tragedy, rather than this brooding, satisfyingly complex study of the many ways in which the bonds of family can be tested. Tonally, the rest of the film is rather more interesting, taking its cue from the character of Yuen – like her, it is cool, dispassionate and knottily ambivalent about the enduring fascination and influence of the father that she tried to cut from her life.