Bends (2013)

Flora Lau’s debut feature is a beautifully formed, subtle film that focuses on the lives of two people with very different prospects – a wealthy Hong Kong woman and her mainland Chinese chauffeur – both trying to cope with life’s unexpected dramas. Anna (Carina Lau) struggles to maintain appearances with her status-conscious friends after her husband mysteriously vanishes. Fai’s (Chen Kun) wife is heavily pregnant with their second child, has no health care entitlements in Hong Kong and cannot give birth in their homeland without incurring penalties for breaching the one-child policy. While their daily routines intersect, their fates only momentarily converge and Lau elegantly critiques the social contradictions at play by paralleling their predicaments rather than constructing drama between the two protagonists. (Source: LFF programme)