Review | Time Still Turns the Pages movie review: Hong Kong family drama uses student suicides as cue for a heart-wrenching tale of guilt and redemption
- Time Still Turns the Pages is a poignant tale of emotional torture, regret and redemption told through a student contemplating ending his own life
- Writer-director Nick Cheuk’s gem of a film is relatively short at 95 minutes, but full of feeling – watch out for the third act’s emotional gut punch
4/5 stars
A Hong Kong schoolboy’s year-long contemplation of whether to end his own life, and the impact this episode has in the following decades, form the dual narrative of Time Still Turns the Pages, a deeply poignant tale of emotional torture, regret and redemption via open, honest communication.
All his students, including a bullying victim in his class (Henick Chou Han-ning), have heard about his marital problems. But when the janitor finds an anonymous suicide note in his classroom’s rubbish bin, the perpetually sad Cheng embarks on an urgent mission to prevent another tragedy.
If the film’s quietly depressing first scene – in which a 10-year-old boy named Eli Cheng (Sean Wong Tsz-lok) makes his way to his residential building’s rooftop and readies himself to jump – has not made the story’s premise clear enough, that is because it is intentional.
