Band Four: Film Review

Every director must start somewhere, and for Mo Lai Yan Chi the beginning starts with her own ‘8 years in the making movie’ about family, forgiveness, and forgetting. Band Four looks on the outset to be just another typical film about people’s love of music and the drive musicians often have to rise to success. That’s not to say this movie isn’t about that, but it’s also a whole lot more.

Lead actor Kay Tse, who’s better known for her massive success in the Cantopop music genre, plays eldest sister, Cat. Cat is the main driving force for the bulk of the movie and it’s mainly her development that we follow on screen.

The rest of the cast give similarly impressive performances and, what’s more impressive, most haven’t professionally acted before! Co-stars Anna hisbbuR (younger sister) and Rondi Chan (Son) are making their big screen debuts, and I guarantee most audiences couldn’t have guessed that based on these performances alone. Both effortlessly showcase the deeper emotions a family in disagreements often has to face, and they are led by an excellent performance from Kwan Wai Pang (professionally known as Teddy Robin) as ‘King’, father to the two sisters. At 78 years of age Teddy proves that acting is equally an old man’s game.

The heart and soul of the movie is the music, so it makes sense that the entirety of the cast is musically apt, but it’s truly astonishing just how musically talented the cast truly is.
The plot at face value is about a disjointed family thrust back together following the death of the mother and we follow as the four go about their lives, with occasional heated confrontations, largely in part due to some dissimilar views on what a family is and what they should do for one another. However, the movie also intertwines other various plot points together such as the trials and tribulations of a starving musician as well as some insightful looks into an illness that over 55 million suffer from.

As good as this is for a first attempt at feature-length filmmaking, the film suffers largely in part due to the fact it is packed full of stereotypical metaphors, which often draw away from the great moments of real character development for an ‘ahh’ moment later on. These don’t detract from the film’s overall charm and enjoyment by any means but act more as a reminder of the director’s possible nervous attempts to show development rather than letting the audience notice it naturally.

Obviously, a film about musicians, starring musicians and directed by a musician is going to have some excellent music and it does. The musical talent is most admirable when nine-year-old Rondi slaps his drumsticks (or chopsticks) atop a drumkit, or any flat surface, to exhibit his character’s emotional state at that time to an impressive level. As a drummer myself, I was trying to establish if the young actor was actually performing the beats and fills himself, and to my surprise… I believe he was. What’s equally as impressive as the young drummer’s talents, is the director’s recognition of the good use of silence in a movie, which she uses to add real emotional depth and elevate moments of real sorrow.

Overall, Band Four is a movie for both lovers of music and lovers of screen and can be appreciated by all. It doesn’t particularly break any moulds but rather embraces the age-old techniques and runs with them. With a great cast, great musical score, and some surprise moments of gloom, Band Four could be a great launching point for a new director and an exciting debut for the novice actors’ future careers.