Xenolith

Shot entirely in Hong Kong and nearly eight years in post-production, this no-budget indie feature looks like any number of HK social-realist TV films but dares to do without a storyline or any hint of hyped-up drama. A working-class man struggles to bring up his two school-age sons; his wife has divorced him and emigrated, but remains a significant absence in the minds of the boys. That's more or less it as far as the content goes. Wong-Ho centres her interest on the minutiae of the kids' lives in the cramped apartment, implicitly challenging the orthodox Confucian view that father-son relations are the core of Chinese society. Unmomentous, but modestly impressive.