The Guardian - Publicerad för för 3 timmar sedan

Ciao UFO review – Hong Kong tear-jerker is less ET than time-hopping chronicle of housing estate kids

In 1985, four working-class characters are bonded for ever by a strange sighting in this sentimental saga that tracks their lives into adulthood

Directed by Patrick Leung, this affecting saga from Hong Kong is a bit tricksy to get to grips with because it keeps hopping back and forth between an assortment of time frames. It tracks a set of characters as children in the mid-1980s, played by one group of young actors, and then later in the 1990s and early 00s when an adult cast takes over. But as it spirals in towards its surprising and dramatic conclusion, everything falls into place and the last 10 minutes is properly tear-jerking – even if it’s unabashedly sentimental, like a classic melodrama.

The key incident foretold in the title happens around halfway through, although it’s no spoiler to know it’s coming. In 1985, a quartet of kids growing up on a working-class Hong Kong housing estate – boys Kin (Matthew Wong Cheuk-yin) and Heem (Chui Ka-him), and girl Hoyi (Lam Seung-yu) and her kid brother (Shawn Heung Sung-yu), for ever called Little Brother – see a UFO in the sky one night. The experience bonds them for ever, even if each kid grows up to pursue goals one wouldn’t expect based on what they’re like as tots. Sailor’s son Kin (played by Chui Tien-you as an adult) pursues wealth in the stock market as it booms in the aftermath of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China, itself an understandably big deal in the story. Heem (a very engaging Wong You-nam) had leukaemia as a child, and lives constantly in the short term under the shadow of illness. Hoyi, who everyone describes as a pudgy little girl, grows up to be a slim-hipped beauty (Charlene Choi Cheuk-yin) – this is considered a great achievement along with becoming an accountant and planning to marry a dullard named Austin (Joey Cho Yiu Leung) who has his life all planned out.

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