{"id":664218,"date":"2026-05-12T10:09:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T10:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/664218\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T10:09:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T10:09:07","slug":"ciao-ufo-review-hong-kong-tear-jerker-is-less-et-than-time-hopping-chronicle-of-housing-estate-kids-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/664218\/","title":{"rendered":"Ciao UFO review \u2013 Hong Kong tear-jerker is less ET than time-hopping chronicle of housing estate kids | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Directed by Patrick Leung, this affecting saga from Hong Kong<\/a> 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 \u2013 even if it\u2019s unabashedly sentimental, like a classic melodrama.<\/p>\n

The key incident foretold in the title happens around halfway through, although it\u2019s no spoiler to know it\u2019s coming. In 1985, a quartet of kids growing up on a working-class Hong Kong housing estate \u2013 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 \u2013 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\u2019t expect based on what they\u2019re like as tots. Sailor\u2019s 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<\/a>, 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) \u2013 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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting is that despite the spaceship stuff this isn\u2019t in the slightest a sci-fi film. It\u2019s really a straight-up multi-stranded realist drama where the city itself, evolving and changing throughout, is one of the characters. There are lots of colourful secondary figures, including a spaced-out uncle who spouts Maoist anti-capitalist doctrine, a superstitious grandfather, and a doomed girlfriend who is the one who got away for one character. For reasons that seem to do with distribution problems and other mishaps, this is only getting an international release now having actually been made back in 2019 , but it still feels fresh, even weirdly relevant as stock-market volatility looms over the world once again.<\/p>\n

Ciao UFO is in UK cinemas from 15 May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Directed by Patrick Leung, this affecting saga from Hong Kong is a bit tricksy to get to grips…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-664218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}