[Review] Suk Suk: Met Too Late

After a round of postponements, Suk Suk has finally been officially released in Hong Kong. I watched this film at the end of last year, and it still leaves a deep impression on me.

Everyone wants to meet someone they like and spend their life with them, experiencing joys and sorrows together, sharing tears and anger. However, life is unpredictable, and not everyone can be with the person who is most suitable for them. Even now, although society is more open than before, feudal values still exist, and many people still cannot freely choose their partners for various reasons, let alone the older generation. The two protagonists of this film, Pak (Tai Bo) and Hoi (Ben Yuen), were born in a more conservative era when homosexuality was considered taboo, and they had no choice but to marry heterosexual partners. It was not until their children grew up and started their own families that they met each other. Being with someone you don't like is undoubtedly a painful thing; and being with someone of the opposite sex you are not interested in, even getting married, is even more unimaginably painful. In the film, Pak and Hoi enter old age, and the weariness on their faces reflect the pain of hiding in the closet and suppressing their desires and true selves for decades.

I believe everyone will agree that youth is the most suitable time for love, and also the time when love is most intense. This is perhaps why most romance films revolve around young couples. Even in foreign films, there are very few films about elderly romance, and this time Suk Suk challenges an even less common but very worthy topic of attention – elderly homosexuality. Young people's love is passionate, so those romance films are always full of passion. On the contray, this film tells the love story of old people and it is appropriately plain and delicate. There are no intense sex scenes or tear-jerking romantic plots, only small moments of the two old men getting to know each other and spending time together, but it is already very moving. In one scene, Pak decides to put aside his past constraints and spend a night at Hoi's house. The two sit on the sofa looking at each other, their eyes full of longing but also a hint of hesitation, as if their bodies are still bound by constraints and dare not take another step forward. This scene has little dialogue and no explicit erotic scenes; the two actors' brilliant performances and their eyes alone are enough to express the inner conflict of the two characters.

The entire film carries a sense of suppression. The two men have lived most of their lives in the shackles of heterosexual marriage. Hoi's wife has already left him, so he is relatively free. But Pak still lives with his wife Ching (Patra Au), and after decades of marriage, the two have become estranged, and their marital relationship exists in name only. Although the film stars Tai Bo and Ben Yuen, Patra Au's performance is also very impressive. She has little dialogue, but every action, expression, and word at home vividly portrays an aging wife who is in a distant relationship but still cares about her husband. In one of the most dramatic scenes in the film, Hoi attends Pak's son's wedding at Pak's invitation, and the three finally meet. The tension conveyed through their eyes alone is incredibly powerful. The two men only meet each other in their old age, but they still have to be secretive, and the time they can spend together is very limited. It is truly a case of meeting too late.

In the last scene of the film, Pak and Hoi seem to separate again, with the former going to a church alone. Is he going to convert? Perhaps not; he wants to find Hoi. If he can't find him in this life, he hopes to meet him again after death. In the past, we may have witnessed this kind of bitterness in many romance films, but the suppression and struggle of these two elderly homosexual men in this film are particularly moving, and something we don't often encounter or can't imagine in our daily lives. Times are changing, and hopefully no one will have to endure such bitterness again.

Trailer:

Synopsis:

The story of two closeted married men in their twilight years, one day Pak, 70, a taxi driver who refuses to retire, meets Hoi, 65, a retired single father, in a park. Despite years of societal and personal pressure, they are proud of the families they have created through hard work and determination. Yet in that brief initial encounter, something is unleashed in them which had been suppressed for so many years. As both men recount and recall their personal histories, they also contemplate a possible future together.

Photo and Source: IMDb