HKIFF: Murmur of the Hearts 念念 (2015) -Taiwan [World Premiere]

Reviewed by Andrew Chan

Reviewed at 39th Hong Kong International Film Festival, 2015

Date: 23 March 2015

Director: Sylvia Chang

Cast: Isabella Leong, Joseph Chang, Lawrence Ko, Angelica Lee Sinje

Support our decade of film scholarships and writing by liking our Facebook page.

Opening film of this year’s Hong Kong International Film Festival is “Murmur of the Hearts”. Director Sylvia Chiang have gone in the road not usually taken to explore a project that is very close to her heart. Touching on numerous life issues, lingering regrets, making life altering decisions, family, love, life and hope. This is a film that travels on how different people deals with life situations. Playing with the sense of time in shifting forward and backwards, Chiang does not allow the audience an easy way out, instead we are given plenty of time and space to reflect upon the characters and our own life decisions. 

Swimming through the sea of thoughts, sometimes in life, we just go with the flow and go on in life, without the sense of looking back. When we encounter something terrible or traumatic, we as humans tend to find a way out, a way of forgetting and sometimes, we regret. “Murmur” is beautiful in its silence and expression as we are able to witness the inner thoughts of each on-screen characters.

Isabella Leong is especially brilliant in her first film since her early retirement. Leong shows plenty of screen presence and her ability to give a raw and naked performance is almost admirable. There is almost something special about Leong’s stare and its emptiness is felt more visually whenever she paints furiously. While she throws herself into a painting and expresses all her inner thoughts, it juxtapose to how empty she is when dealing with her past and present life. Joseph Chang plays the struggling boxer who literally release out smaller fish into the sea, because it is not big enough. However, in a memorable scene, the audience is given a lesson in life; sometimes you have to take the small hope in life to turn it into something bigger. Angelica Lee shines as the mother that is essentially the origins of all the troubles.

Director Chiang seems to have a lot to say in this picture and many are universal truths that are simply “murmur” within our hearts. While there are moments that drags, the film works particularly well by being slow paced and thus allowing the audience to fully engross with the proceeding. In turn making the powerful and emotional roundabout near the end, all the more rewarding. All in all, “Murmur” is easily a film that will last beyond this festival and something that will surely provides a much deeper insight at another viewing down the track. This is a rewarding journey buried within a sea of thoughts… (Neo 2015)

Recommended film and endorsed by HK Neo Reviews.