Drifting Petals

Clara Law’s modern, urban ghost story is as haunting as it is bafflingly poetic.

“An elegy in memory of a city.”

This is what the on-screen text says as Drifting Petals – Clara Law’s enigmatic ghost story – wraps up. It’s a perfect encapsulation of what the film is in more ways than one. On its surface the film mourns Hong Kong – and Macau, with it – after failed revolutionary action from its citizens and increased governmental pressure from Mainland China. On a deeper level, the film elegises its cities through poetic use of filmmaking techniques, weaving together a lot of loosely-connected plot threads and styles. Like modern poetry, its stories are often left hanging like half-sentences leading to line breaks, giving us an idea, and plenty of gaps for which we must fill.

The film is partly told in first person perspective, with Clara Law voicing the person behind the camera interviewing a jobless, aimless piano player called Jeff (Jeff Lai). She is looking for, or mourning, her brother who has likely died in a revolution (and may or may not be ghost that likes to flush toilets). These sections are interspersed with scenes of Jeff wandering around hauntingly sparse Hong Kong streets, getting involved in the life of a runaway Mein (Ariel Ng), who believes she can talk to ghosts.

It’s an odd, but charmingly simple story, one that becomes more complex the more we delve into Mein’s life, and the lives of her boyfriend, mother and father. But none of it is going to be particularly narratively satisfying; it’s not meant to be. Like the cities in which it is set, nothing is concluded. Only ghosts of stories, of revolutions past, and of bloody, all-too-recent history lingers.

One of the film’s greatest strengths comes in the form of its lead (or as close to you can get to a lead on this film). To compare an actor to a sleepwalker is typically negative, but Jeff Lai’s performance is exactly that, in a good way. His character ambles through a deserted Hong Kong in a dream state, and lets the city’s history and people wash over him as he is buffeted by the tides of Hong Kong’s fluctuating state. It’s a deliberate choice, and it works for the film, and is heavily contrasted by his excellent, energetic piano playing throughout – a symbol that there is life, and passion still that burns, even when it tries to be extinguished.

The film is a huge departure in style from Clara Law’s previous film, and this is largely due to how it was made: on a shoestring budget, having had no public funding, and hiring volunteers to tell a story that would have never been approved. Law says she wanted to make a documentary, and this is about as close as she could have made, blurring the lines between fiction and reality. As a filmmaker, she invites the ghosts of Hong Kong’s history to linger, to haunt us, so that we can remember those that fell, and what they stood for.

Verdict: Cryptic, expressive and captivating throughout, Drifting Petals reminds us of where we were, so that we may not wander so blindly.

---

Overall entertainment: 8/10
Violence: Murder?/10
Sex: 0/10
Liszt: Hey, I love Blackpink!
Taxpayers: Have a duty to look after us artists
Ghosts: Some!
Symbolism: That lone, ever-burning candle’s up there. But what does it mean?

Drifting Petals (2020)
Also known as: 花果飄零
Cantonese

Director: Clara Law
Writer: Eddie Fong, Clara Law

CAST

Jeff Lai – Jeff
Ariel Ng – Mien