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Edmund Lee

4/5 stars
Grief, anger, regret, worry and longing are just some of the states of mind experienced by Lau Ching-wan’s conflicted titular protagonist in Papa, a delicately sketched and at times unbearably sad portrait of a Hong Kong family destroyed by an act of unspeakable evil overnight.
Having directed the acclaimed Port of Call (2015) and produced the box office hit The Sparring Partner (2022), writer-director Philip Yung Tsz-kwong once again draws a sublime human story out of a gruesome real-life killing – in Hong Kong in 2010 – with this heart-wrenching drama.
When we first meet him, Nin Yuen (Lau), the middle-aged owner of a 24-hour cha chaan teng in Tsuen Wan, is calmly going about his everyday life amid awkward stares from acquaintances in the neighbourhood. Papa is filmed in a nearly square 4:3 aspect ratio and the audience soon comes to realise how Nin is boxed in by his predicament.


It transpires that his 15-year-old son, Ming (Dylan So Man-to), is in police custody after admitting to brutally killing his own mother, Yin (Jo Koo Cho-lam), and younger sister, Grace (Lainey Hung Lok-yee), with a chopper one ordinary evening, and Nin has been attending Ming’s court hearings from time to time.
Through fragmented flashbacks that repeatedly invade Nin’s consciousness in the intolerable present, Papa offers a kaleidoscope of fond and idyllic memories of the Yuens’ family life: from the 1993 meet-cute between Nin and Yin, a Hakka native, all the way to the final dinner that the family of four shared shortly before Ming’s moment of insanity.
Why did Ming do what he did? That is the question Nin keeps asking his son – even if it doesn’t appear to be a concern for Yung. We soon see the boy being convicted of manslaughter by reason of acute schizophrenia, but the film shows us no signs of his mental health issue either before or after the killing.
What the viewer is left with is an artfully presented and emotionally genuine slice-of-life drama with an unshakeable sense of sorrow infused in every scene – whether we’re watching Nin and Yin at an impromptu karaoke session hours before their wedding or the family’s peaceful final trip to China’s Hainan province.

The cast of Papa is uniformly excellent, although the heavy lifting is undoubtedly done by Lau, who turns in a rich and poignant performance as the traumatised father. It is arguably the actor’s most impressive appearance in years, even when compared to his Hong Kong Film Award-winning role in 2022’s Detective vs Sleuths.
While the film may disappoint those who are attracted to it solely by its true-crime roots, Papa leaves an indelible impression as a psychologically complex tale of unconditional family love, beautifully narrated around an impossibly macabre twist.
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Lau Ching-wan as Nin Yuen and Lainey Hung as his daughter in a still from Papa, directed by Philip Yung. Dylan So and Jo Koo co-star. Photo: Golden Scene

Jo Koo as Yin and Dylan So as her son and killer Ming in a still from Papa. Photo: Golden Scene.

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Lau’s character experiences a maelstrom of emotions after his son kills his wife and daughter in Philip Yung’s sublime human drama


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Review

Review | Papa movie review: Lau Ching-wan shines as traumatised father in true-crime family drama

Lau’s character experiences a maelstrom of emotions after his son kills his wife and daughter in Philip Yung’s sublime human drama