Hong Khaou (who returns next year with ‘Monsoon’) was nominated for a BAFTA for his touching and intimated Lilting starring Ben Whishaw (‘The Personal History of David Copperfield’) and legendary Chinese actor Cheng Pei-Pei (‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’).
A Cambodian-Chinese mother mourning the untimely death of her son finds her life disrupted by the presence of a stranger, a young man who claims to be a close friend of her son’s. We observe their difficulties in trying to connect with one another without a common language then, through a translator, they piece together memories of a man they both loved dearly.
★★★★ “Switches between low-key realism, subtle ethereality and gentle romantic and culture-clash comedy” - Patrick Peters, Empire
★★★★ “An affecting, intelligent, unapologetically downbeat feature debut” - Jonathan Romney, The Guardian
