Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong

Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong

Outside a bar, Ruby (Jamie Chung), a Chinese-American new to Hong Kong, is looking for her friends. She has no idea where she is. A guy overhears and intervenes. This is Josh (Bryan Greenberg), who has lived in Hong Kong for 10 years. He’s “in finance.” He knows his way around and speaks Cantonese. After a moment of pause on her end, the two of them venture into the neon drenched glamour of Hong Kong on an all night “walk and talk.” The formula of “Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong,” written and directed by Emily Ting (her first feature), produced by Ting and Sophia Shek, is one that has worked before.

But the movie lacks the underlying subtext that grounded similar hopeful yet doomed romance stories in the past. The dialogue, which both actors charm their way through, stays at a surface jokey level throughout. The stakes are not high enough for either character; the two people at a fork in the road story never comes alive; this is essentially fatal flaw territory here. What these stories need to achieve is that knowledge that these two characters need to be together; you ache for them to break through into deeper intimacy with one another.

As they walk to Ruby’s destination during which Josh shows her some sights they talk about themselves and get to know each other better. Josh expresses dissatisfaction with his finance job; he wants to quit so he can become a novelist. (Of course he does.) Ruby launches into an inspirational speech about taking chances when she barely knows him; he seems floored by her banal insight, it’s hard to believe he’s never heard such a thing before but it sets up this too-easy idea that his “brief encounter” with Ruby changes the course of his life or something like that. Also she’s a toy-designer with unrealized dreams.

These are familiar devices and they can work. They are both so financially fortunate (no crime in that, they both work hard) it has made them lazy, complacent. Ruby hardly notices Hong Kong; she complains about the lack of Netflix and the fact that it is impossible to get good Mexican food here. Josh knows the cool non-tourist places to go but has no perspective on his circumstances outside of, well, to Los Angelenos, “already tomorrow in Hong Kong.” They seem un-curious, un-engaged with their own lives; it’s hard to invest in two people who have so readily taken the easy way out.

Both Josh and Ruby have off-screen partners who make their presence known through phone messages or Outlook reminders of an upcoming Skype call. Their emotions towards their respective partners are ambivalent at best and the problem with this is that they come off as people looking for an excuse to cheat rather than a situation much more unstable and important. You know a “romance” film isn’t working when you think in exasperation: Oh go ahead just cheat if your relationship bores you so much no one’ll know/fault you/etc. Break up with your partner! For God’s sake you’re not married! No harm no foul! It isn’t the most romantic vibe.

Cameraman Josh Silfen switches his shooting angles up a lot; sometimes the camera follows them from behind, and other times it swings around to go ahead of them. He also pays a lot of attention to the lights of Hong Kong, which blur and twinkle in the background/foreground, giving everything a kind of dreamy atmosphere. This is a poetic style that works: With all this flashy stuff going on around them, we’re still focused on Ruby and Josh talking to each other.

This saves “Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong” from being just another travelogue, but it also points out why the movie doesn’t quite work. Both Greenberg and Chung were executive producers on this film. Both of these actors are very good at what they do: Greenberg is effortlessly charming in a very real-guy kind of way, while Chung can turn her mood or energy level on a dime.

But then Josh and Ruby “bond” during a routine shopping montage where they haggle over the price of a selfie stick, or an awkward scene where they get their fortunes read (at least it’s not raining). Think about River Phoenix and Lili Taylor in “Dogfight,” which has that same “sightseeing” structure; or Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in “Before Sunrise,” paying that guy lying by the river to write a poem for them there’s just no comparison there. What’s missing is magic.

“Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong” falls into the long tradition of extended meet cutes films like Vincente Minnelli’s “The Clock,” David Lean’s “Brief Encounter,” Nancy Savoca’s “Dogfight” or Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy. There are elements of cultural disorientation too, reminiscent of Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation.” It’s clear that Ting knows the bucket she wants to put her story in; it’s clear she knows what sort of self-control and bittersweet longing she wants to create. There are moments, brief moments, when that tone is achieved.

But mostly Ruby and Josh have more in common with the feather weight “relationship” of Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro in “Falling in Love” than the torment of “Brief Encounter” or the urgency of “The Clock.” If nothing else, this movie should be seen as an object lesson in just how hard it is to make a film work with this story-structure. It reminds us what miracles “The Clock” and “Before Sunrise” were stories shimmering with delicacy and inference; deep conversations leading to connections more intellectual than sexual; masterpieces of barely-controlled passion and longing. “Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong” doesn’t even come close.

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