Australian
Screen

Clip description

Mrs Chan (Cecilia Lee) comes to try to rouse her daughter Bing (Annie Yip) from the depths of depression. This illness developed once her parents decided to move from the house she had made ready for them. Old Mrs Chan sets up the altar she brought from Hong Kong and apologises to the ancestors for disturbing them ‘from such a distance’. She asks for their help with Bing, and for the whole family. Bing cries quietly on the stairs behind her, unknown to her mother.

Curator’s notes

This scene occurs near the end, and provides the film’s emotional climax – a heart-rending prayer that gets right to the heart of the family’s unhappiness. The Chans have not had a hard time from anyone in Australia; the film shows no overt signs of racism towards them (unlike Germany, where Yen has to confront neo-Nazi hatred). They are affluent and largely bilingual, and still the process of migrating is shown as intensely painful, no matter how comfortable their physical lives may be.

Floating Life is about something much deeper and much more difficult – the emotion of migration and resettlement. Mrs Chan calls Australia ‘this paradise on earth’ and she’s not being ironic, but her pain, and that of her psychologically damaged daughter Bing, gave Australian audiences a glimpse of what some migrating families go through. Many Australians knew the story already, from personal experience, but very few films have yet tapped into these great reservoirs of emotion. Most of the cast of Floating Life were found in Australia. Cecilia Lee, who plays Mrs Chan, had acted in Hong Kong, and is active in Australia with a touring Cantonese Opera troupe. Edwin Pang was an ABC broadcaster. Annette Shun Wah is an actress and presenter on television. The film achieved only moderate success at the Australian box office, but it was critically acclaimed. It did well in some overseas territories, notably Taiwan, where the theme of displacement and exile is a familiar subject for that country’s filmmakers and audiences.