Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong
by Emily Ting
Unbound Feet Productions
Sarah: Watching Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong. 1 hour, 18 minutes. perfect
It’s sad that 2 hours is often too much of a commitment for me. I’m embarrassed admitting that.
This was written and directed by Emily Ting, so I’m giving Emily all the credit for all the things I like. And so far there’s a lot.
Carrie: This movie is basically the exact same movie as the Chris Evans one only without the purse theft.
Also I just want to advise our readers that you should not try watching romantic comedy while you are a cranky pants. Because in another mood I would love this but today I’m just like “these over-privileged tourists are the worst.”
RHG: I live in a pretty big city, and I love big cities, but Hong Kong just looks SO STRESSFUL to me. I’m not sure if not being able to understand random conversations (because I don’t understand Chinese) would make it more or less stressful.
Sarah: Ruby’s “Mmm, no,” said so much in two syllables. “No, strange dude I don’t know. I don’t want you to walk me.”
Carrie: A lot of romantic comedy seems to involve women trying to decide if helpful guy is actually a serial killer.
Sarah: Two Americans in Hong Kong shit talking each other’s cities. Yup.
RHG: No one can give directions anymore. It’s sad. Although as meet-cutes go, this has potential. (stop smoking, dude, it’s gross)
“There’s something very wrong with you city when the only nice thing you have going for you is the weather.” That’s not fair Josh, they also have In and Out burger. But then so does San Diego, and the beaches in SD are MUCH better. I did a science.
Sarah: He’s in finance, wants to be a writer. Is this like Paul, the real estate novelist?
RHG: Ugh, a finance bro. Of course he is. I should have known, because that blue oxford shirt is finance bro uniform. (AND HE’S AN ASPIRING NOVELIST. OF COURSE HE IS)
Sarah: I love that being strangers in a momentary interaction allows them to be really honest with each other. I also love that they can make fun of themselves a little, too.
Carrie: Oh ouch the girlfriend thing. “You left your girlfriend at a bar so you could go to a bar with another girl?”
OH MY GOD IT WAS HIS GIRLFRIEND’S PARTY. DUDE.
Sarah: “What makes them immigrants and you expats?” RUBY. ASKING THE QUESTIONS.
RHG: Deep questions about the difference between immigrants and ex-pats. Timely.
Sarah: Have mercy. Travel, long term residency in far away countries. Deep and honest conversations. People who laugh at themselves. JUSTIN BEAVER.
Could this be any more of my catnip?
RHG: Annnnd we’re gonna pause while I pull up Hong Kong on Google maps. I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT THEIR ROUTE. He took her on the most circular route there.
Writing for money? Oh, Ruby. That’s adorable.
Sarah: So many of the things Josh says could be super creepy but the actor manages to spin it so I’m not creeped out. I wonder if a different viewer who isn’t already on board (JUSTIN BEAVER) would be like, dude, dial back the creeper. Me, I think he’s self aware enough to
Ruby can also be really honest with him because she’s got nothing to lose by telling a stranger exactly what she thinks. And vice versa. Except for the girlfriend part.
RHG: “….girlfriend.” Ruby and I have the same tone in our voice.
Sarah: I’m asking myself, was he flirting? “If I misled you?” You kinda did, dude.
Ruby has the greatest facial expressions. Her “Are you KIDDING me?” face is a work of goddam art.
Oooh, jump ahead a year. Josh is scruffy with beard and a lot more worried expressions. Has he quit his job? YES HE HAS. The beard was my first clue. That and the flannel.
Carrie: We can tell he’s writing now because of the flannel.
I’m kind of surprised she recognized him. Also surprised she didn’t lead with “Josh! Are you an alcoholic now?” because his “I am a writer” look comes with the eyes of madness.
RHG: Plaid shirt? Scruff? Oh, Josh.
Sarah: She changed his life direction with a few hours’ conversation. That’s really cool. And he must have saved some money to stay in Hong Kong.
RHG: He’s been in Hong Kong for eleven years, and the fact that he’s reasonably competent in Cantonese is…kinda hot?
(Quick question, there, Joshua. What’s the residency requirements in Hong Kong? Do you need to have a work visa? Do you have some form of permanent residency? HOW DOES IT WORK asking for a friend.)
Sarah: She really likes him, and dislikes that she likes him.
RHG: They do have a really nice, easy chemistry.
Carrie: Ruby bringing the high quality burns here.
Sarah: I love that they give each other shit about cultures. And I love that she vents about her own cultural adjustment, and he gets it. He gives her room to vent and he gets it. But he also loves where he lives.
Carrie: I love how while he’s trying to get Ruby to have a drink with him there’s a guy in the back of the shot framed between them cracking up, like, “Good luck there, buddy.”
Sarah: MONTAGE WITH SUNGLASSES. AND A SELFIE STICK. EVERYBODY DRINK.
Carrie: SHOPPING MONTAGE!
“Yeah, they are very cute! I designed them!” Ha, that’s adorable. They are a much cuter couple when they don’t think they are on a date.
Sarah: “How did she take you quitting your job?” She gets right at the heart of things but he doesn’t ask her much until she opens the possibility – and then avoids it.
RHG: Nachos with Doritos and yogurt? That’s….horrible! THAT IS A LEGIT COMPLAINT. (Dim sum is good only if you don’t have objections to shrimp or are willing to dissect your food to find hidden shrimps. I am willing to dissect my food to find hidden shrimps. Not gonna sacrifice pizza for that, though)
Carrie: “To eat politely is not to eat at all” words to live by.
Sarah: It’s interesting – a lot of their conversation revolves around what’s real, what matters, whether their jobs are true to themselves, whether their relationships are true to who they are.
It’s interesting that while I usually dislike infidelity narratives, this is a movie built on emotional infidelity. Their walking conversations are honest but dishonest, too. They’re truthful with each other but they don’t fully acknowledge how powerful the draw between them is, and how they create their own space around themselves when they’re together. Also they have great chemistry.
RHG: Josh, when you say your girlfriend supports you, do you mean like, support, or support?
Sarah: And even in a space surrounded by his friends, where they must know him and his girlfriend, they’re clearly – OUCH FRIEND INTERRUPTION. OUCH. COLD FRIEND.
RHG: Who didn’t have a starter engagement that didn’t work out? (Oh my god, you proposed on Washington Irving’s grave? How….wow.)
Actually, an outlook reminder for Skype dates makes sense, especially when there’s that big a stretch between time zones.
Sarah: And she’s having a “what am I doing moment.” And she dodges her phone call appt. Ouch again.
“What are we doing?”
“Smoking a cigarette.”
“We were just hanging out. Right?”
Well, yes and no. He’s trying to dodge the underlying truth, that while they’re being honest they’re not being honest.
Carrie: Smoking is not sexy.
RHG: GIRL NOW YOU’RE SMOKING TOO
Sarah: The shot of them walking really far apart is a little wrenching. And they move apart to split the cab. Split being the operative word.
“Does she appreciate …” “Does he appreciate…?”
Carrie: They are both awful to their significant others. And their significant others sound awful.
Sarah: “It’s not fair to them.”
“We haven’t done anything.”
I’d argue you have, there, Josh.
RHG: Josh, you both kind of are emotionally cheating. But here’s the thing though – the timing for you guys isn’t great. However, I think he’s right- maybe they should re-evaluate, but MAN the timing is terrible. TERRIBLE.
Sarah: OUCH. RUBY. Handing back the big secret.
RHG: DanielGreg does sound kinda like a bore, though.
Carrie: This movie is almost over and I still haven’t decided if I like Ruby or not but her range of facial expressions is priceless.
Sarah: OMG. IT IS A CLIFFHANGER MOVIE. HAHAHAHA. I’m the worst.
RHG: …that’s it?
Carrie: Argh cliffhanger ending argh!
Sarah: OK, so do you think they went upstairs to her apartment? Or did they part ways and never see each other again?
RHG: Well.
I mean, look, I’ve got this nihilist “the world is gonna end so who cares” attitude lately, so whatever Ruby, flip a coin. Have the bird pick for you. Just…do something and don’t stick with DanielGreg just because that seems like the right thing. You don’t want to hurt him but you also don’t want to hurt him in the long term by staying in a marriage just because you think you should.
I thought this gave an interesting view of Hong Kong – tourism boards pay good money for this kind of portrayal.
It was cute! It was a pleasant way to spend an hour and 18 minutes. Jamie Chung is very pretty (ohhhhh, she was criminally underused as Mulan in Once Upon a Time! That’s where I know her from!) and Josh is a perfectly fine dude, whatever. They did have GREAT chemistry! And in another time they would make a cute couple. Maybe in this time, if they can deal with their other partners appropriately. Maybe. (Oh, Jamie and Bryan are actually married to each other, no wonder they have good chemistry! Although that’s not a given, tbh.)
Sarah: So my grade: B. I’m frustrated a little by the lack of clear ending, but I have been enjoying the way my brain has pondered it for days afterward, trying to figure out what would happen next.
So while the story is balanced on two long episodes of emotional infidelity, I’m not angry (to my surprise) because they recognize that their being together from that point on has greater weight and greater opportunity to harm their respective relationships. They struggle with that, because it’s no longer frameable as “Nothing happened,” and “Seriously, it’s nothing,” so I respect their acknowledgement that it’s a painful choice.
That said, I also don’t think they’re necessarily good for one another in the long term. They seem more like catalysts in human form: their presence in one another’s lives creates change and honest confrontation, from examining their careers and job satisfaction to examining the status and relative health of their respective romantic relationships. I don’t think they’d be able to encourage one another to change and then find stasis and contentment once they finished evolving.
But I could be wrong. OMG Cliffhanger.
Carrie: Even though I’m super cranky I would still give this movie a solid B. They got me at the shopping montage and kept levelling up from there.
Am revisiting this after a week and I’m going to drop my grade to a C+. The problem is that I can’t picture this couple doing anything but wandering around Hong Kong. I can’t picture them as an actual, functioning couple. I don’t particularly care about these people, together or separately. Also, I think the ending is a cop out with a dollop of squick. I feel like what they OUGHT to do is part ways but keep each other’s contact info, deal with their relationships, and possibly get together later. And I’m guessing that Ruby will stay with her boyfriend but Josh will break up with Sam. But the amount of emotional infidelity left me feeling grossed out after the glow of the shopping montage had ended.
Bonus “AWWWW”: According to TV Tropes the two lead actors are married in real life! Awwwww!
Did you watch the movie? What’d you think about the cliffhanger ending (sorry!)? Let us know what you think in the comments!
I had a feeling that the emotional infidelity and the cliffhanger ending would bother people. Maybe I should have warned everyone when it was picked, but I didn’t want to give away spoilers. I still enjoyed it due to the performances and the chemistry between the characters. If this were a book, I would not enjoy it at all. I have very different standards for romance books and romance movies. Also, I’ve just gotten used to cliffhanger endings in movies. I think writers and directors think that it’s more sophisticated and that leaving an ending up to audience interpretation is more high-brow than wrapping things up.
I’m sure I’ve pushed this series before, but this movie owes a lot to a much better movie, Before Sunrise. Walking, talking, sight-seeing, and forming a connection is what the first movie in the series is all about. Then Before Sunset visits that couple seven years later and Before Midnight is set another seven years after that. It’s interesting to get to see the different stages of the couple, Celine and Jesse’s (I totally watched it originally, when I was a teenager, because it had a character with my name and the cute guy from White Fang and Dead Poets Society), life. The first two movies are streaming free with an Amazon Prime subscription if I’ve sold anyone on checking them out.
I adore the Before trilogy starring Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy and this seems to be heavily inspired by that. The movies were made 10 yrs apart irl (the first one was released in 1995, the second in 2005 IIRC, and the third in 2013), and the stories reflect this passage of time. for those who liked this one, or even disliked this ‘cuz of its cliffhanger ending, I’d suggest to check out the Before movies. You guys might enjoy it!
I *just* watched this (reminded I hadn’t gotten to it yet by this post showing up in my feed) and I…sort of liked it? I think I’m in the same B wavelength as everyone else. I really liked the low-key-ness of most of their conversations, leaving the movie to ride on their chemistry, and I liked the broad view of Hong Kong, which I know very little about.
I agree that it’s reminiscent of the Before movies but not as good, and I think that comes down to the characters’ life stages and emotional infidelity. They don’t move from philosophical young innocents to jaded thirtysomethings; they’re both already living compromised lives. Even their initial conversations are very surface-level and tentative rather than open-hearted. Which is fine for the story it’s telling! But certainly leads right to the compromised ending–how could they end any other way when they don’t really grow in their emotional honesty? I definitely loved their complicated conversations about culture etc. but I didn’t necessarily feel they belonged with each other–I think they both need to break up with their significant others and spend a couple years in therapy and then maybe send each other a Facebook message when they can figure out how to be honest.
To me it felt like a segment (a very good segment) of a bigger movie that never got made, between the fact that there’s no real ending, and the characters don’t change a whole lot emotionally over the course of the movie. On the other hand, I really loved the dialogue between the two actors. It felt like conversations two real people would have–a lot of romantic comedy these days consists of people doing and saying things that wouldn’t work at all real life, so I have a hard time buying into the love story.
I thought I recognized the lead actress, but didn’t realize she had played Mulan!
*sighs* this movie is the reason I don’t watch movies. Why isn’t the hero Asian? Before trilogy movies are very beautiful, they will always remind me of my one and only live that got away