Love hurts in Wong Ka Ki’s mysterious, neon-lit romantic drama.
Some films are subtle with their messaging, weaving their philosophy gently throughout the narrative. Others like to hammer you over the head with it, with characters declaring their motivations throughout. And some movies do a bit of both, combining a strong theme and a loud message with dream logic, aethereal aesthetics and inscrutable characters. I Heard They’re Not Going to See Each Other Anymore is definitely one of the latter,
I Heard They’re Not Going to See Each Other Anymore, a film title I refuse to shorten, has four main characters, though two of them are more main the others. There’s Tao (Elizabeth Tang), whose relationship with her boyfriend Shin (Shin Cheung) is largely defined by pain she can inflict on him. Believing a relationship needs strong memories, and that memories are best created through pain, she hired gangsters to beat him up, and then looks after him. A red flag, perhaps.
The second story is about Melih (Melih Selcuk), a Turkish noodle shop owner who has a crush on a regular at his store, Ping (Yu-ping Wang). She leaves him a flower one day, causing him to wonder what could be its meaning. The two stories interact several times, with character reflecting on the nature of love, and the unpredictable, often bizarre things we do for it.
Wong Ka ki’s dreamlike film moves in strange and unpredictable ways. It’s more a collection of scenes, connected through its shared characters, its themes and style, rather than telling a singular story. There’s no real payoff, just some realisations about the nature of our own relationships.
In less than subtle ways, the film is telling us that by our very nature, wanting to be remembered requires causing lasting pain. We can look back at the scars of a happy relationship, hurt for how it ended, or at the wreckage of a painful one and smile that the memories. Either way, love can’t live without pain, and I Heard They’re Not Seeing Each Other Anymore takes this to a pretty literal extreme.
It makes her largely unlikeable. The characters in this movie are more like ideas taken human form than anything else, so the idea that they could be also actors in a mockumentary is curious. The film’s documentary moments feel a bit weak in comparison to the drama because of this. The characters all occupy that Wong Kar-wai realm of heightened reality, where people react strangely. They speak human truths, and narrative truths, but less to realism and real world veracity. It’s also worth noting that two of the film’s many, many writers are the two leads.
It’s hard to know exactly when Tao moves away from her character to her “real” self, and this is true for everyone in the film, and that’s because there’ isn’t that much to any of their characters. But while it might put some people off, it all feels deliberate, to blend the realm of emotion with that of logic.
I Heard They’re Not Going to See Each Other Anymore won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but to those who love trancelike narratives and dreampop art will be transfixed throughout. From its soft lighting, neon colours and interesting point of view shots, I Heard They’re Not Going to See Each Other Anymore stands, if only near the bottom, within the pantheon of Hong Kong’s new New Wave.
Verdict: Odd, esoteric but always fascinating to watch, you’ll know from minute one if I Heard They’re Not Going to See Each Other Anymore is for you and if it is, you’ll get a kick out of it.
You can catch it at this year’s London Hong Kong Film Festival
I Heard They’re Not Going to See Each Other Anymore (2026)
Cantonese
Director: Wong Ka-ki
Writer: Shin Cheung, Melih Selçuk, Elizabeth Tang, Ten Ka-Hei Tang, Ka Ki Wong
CAST
Elizabeth Tang – Tao
Melih Selcuk – Melih
Shin Cheung – Shin
Wang Yu-ping – Ping
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