Title: Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong

Director: Emily Ting

Starring: Jamie Chung, Bryan Greenberg, Sarah Lian, Jaden Cheng, Richard Ng, Linda Trinh.

Director Emily Ting is a groundbreaking female filmmaker. Her analysis of the prelude to love can recall that of Richard Linklater: ‘Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong’ could very well be the Asian adaptation of the trilogy ‘’Before Sunrise-Before Sunset-Before Midnight.’

In Ting’s spirited romance, Ruby, a Chinese American toy designer from Los Angeles, visits Hong Kong for the first time on business. Finding herself stranded, she meets Josh, an American expat who shows her the city. While both are Americans, Josh has been living in Hong Kong for a decade, while working at an investment bank. This is the unexpected approach Ting takes in confronting the Asian and Western culture, where the Waspy broker knows all about the Cantonese culture, whereas the L.A.-Girl-of-Chinese-descent only speaks American and is accustomed to the Californian lifestyle.

Meandering through night time streets pulsing with energy and possibility, Ruby and Josh fall into a winding and carefree conversation, buoyed by an undeniable attraction. There is a witty and astute inversion of cultures. Ting’s screenplay gives them plenty to talk about, from East-West relationship stereotypes to homesickness, finance and ‘Seinfeld.’ The two strangers in the night discuss their ambitions and careers, with Ruby urging Josh to follow his dreams of quitting banking to become a writer. Just as things are starting to get interesting, a key miscommunication breaks the spell, and they awkwardly part ways; only to reconnect a year later, with uncharted odds regarding their romance.

Lead actors Jamie Chung and Bryan Greenberg are a real-life couple, and they naturally generate great chemistry on screen. The actress who plays Mulan in television series ‘Once Upon A Time’ and her husband who is Ben Epstein in the HBO series ‘How To Make It in America’, make sparks fly in Emily Ting’s charming directorial debut. This movie is a true delight for those who fall in love cerebrally and are firm believers that serendipity is the key to life.

Technical: B

Acting: A

Story: A+

Overall: A-

Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong Movie Review

By Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi, is a film critic, culture and foreign affairs reporter, screenwriter, film-maker and visual artist. She studied in a British school in Milan, graduated in Political Sciences, got her Masters in screenwriting and film production and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York and Los Angeles. Chiara’s “Material Puns” use wordplay to weld the title of the painting with the materials placed on canvas, through an ironic reinterpretation of Pop-Art, Dadaism and Ready Made. She exhibited her artwork in Milan, Rome, Venice, London, Oxford, Paris and Manhattan. Chiara works as a reporter for online, print, radio and television and also as a film festival PR/publicist. As a bi-lingual journalist (English and Italian), who is also fluent in French and Spanish, she is a member of the Foreign Press Association in New York, the Women Film Critics Circle in New York, the Italian Association of Journalists in Milan and the Federation of Film Critics of Europe and the Mediterranean. Chiara is also a Professor of Phenomenology of Contemporary Arts at IED University in Milan.

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