Logline
What traps her is no longer her parents' failings, but the skeletal girl inside her who has never been released.
Coming and Going in Peace
Creative Statement
More than ten years ago, at my uncle's home, I saw my cousin reduced to a skeleton. She had tried to keep her unfaithful father by harming herself, until her body and mind deteriorated to the brink of death. After her parents divorced, she called her father "that man" until he died. Yet at his memorial service she knelt for a long time, weeping, and said, "I was wrong." The image of that skeleton and of her kneeling apology has stayed with me. It reminds me how many parents and children around me are separated by gulfs they cannot cross and regrets they cannot make up for.
Synopsis
Siyue, who lives abroad, attempts suicide after a failed relationship. Learning that her mother Qiaozhen's herbal tea shop is about to be demolished, she returns to her hometown and offers to take her mother abroad, but her mother refuses. She discovers that her mother has reconciled with her father Yongtang, divorced for many years, and Yongtang even asks Siyue to look after her unfortunate half-sister Xiaojing. As a teenager, Siyue tried to keep her unfaithful father at home by harming herself and ended up with anorexia. Her father did everything he could to save her from death, but in the end he still left Siyue and her mother for another family. In the years she lived alone with her mother, Siyue and Qiaozhen grew distant, and her fear of intimacy kept her from accepting Junhong's affection. Then she stumbled upon her divorced parents' one-night reunion and learned that her mother had let her destroy herself to win Yongtang back. In despair, Siyue fled her homeland. Although Siyue's body has long recovered, the skeleton that stands for her hatred has stayed buried inside her. Back home, this inner demon torments her again. Siyue makes Yongtang stop running around for Qiaozhen's tea shop and agrees to look after Xiaojing on condition that he disappears for good. Xiaojing is happy to see Siyue, but Siyue gives her money to settle things between them, and Xiaojing leaves disappointed. Xiaojing gives the money to Yongtang and they quarrel. The day before the tea shop closes, the police inform them that Yongtang has died. To make the money for her mother to keep the tea shop, her father had bought into a fund; when he found he had been cheated, he fought with the swindler, suffered another stroke and died. Siyue's inner demon returns to dust with her father. She decides to stay and live with Qiaozhen.
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Genre:
Family, Drama -
Director:
Huang Qiling
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Executive Producer:
Lam Bing-kwan (Hong Kong, China) -
Screenwriter:
Huang Qiling
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Producer:
Ding Yu | Ng Kwan-cheung (Hong Kong, China)