Lilting **** (2014, Ben Whishaw, Pei-pei Cheng, Andrew Leung, Naomi Christie, Peter Bowles) – Movie Review

Ben Whishaw is perfect and diamond geezer Peter Bowles is lovely in the exquisitely done and very moving drama film Lilting (2014).

Lilting (2014) is lovely, exquisitely done and very moving. Get out the hankies, it’s a five-hankie tearjerker.

Smouldering with understated emotion, Ben Whishaw is perfect as Richard, a London gay man who has been in a loving relationship with a Cambodian Chinese man Kai (Andrew Leung), killed in a road accident after visiting his mother in the care home he’s put her in because he knows he can’t tell her he’s gay.

Legendary actress Pei-pei Cheng is ideal as the rather bewildered, stubborn, irritating and prejudiced Cambodian Chinese mother, Junn, whose mourning the untimely death of her son is interrupted by the arrival of a stranger – Richard – who has come to help her and connect. Without a common language, but, with the help of a friendly translator called Vann (Naomi Christie), Richard tries to connect with Junn, while still hiding the fact that her son was gay and he was his boyfriend.

It turns out Junn has started a relationship of her own – with fellow care home inmate Alan (Peter Bowles, lovely). Can Richard and Junn connect? Can they help each other grieve, celebrate the past, treasure the old memories of a man they both loved, come to terms and move on?

Writer-director Hong Khaou’s extremely touching film gets intimately up, close and personal, as it talks poignantly about both the things that keep us apart as people and the things that bring us together.

Ben Whishaw met Australian composer Mark Bradshaw on set while making Bright Star in 2008, and they joined in a civil partnership in Australia in August 2012. He played Q to Daniel Craig’s James Bond in Skyfall (2012) and returned for the 24th 007 movie Spectre in 2015 and No Time to Die in 2021.

Peter Bowles (16 October 1936 – 17 March 2022).

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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