The Age of Goodbyes is a beautiful, affecting film, from the story itself to the performances and enticing cinematography. Edmund Yeo keeps the story together well, despite moments when it gets unwieldy. This thoughtful drama does a great job of pulling you in.

Lin Sang has been living in a twenty-five-year funeral procession; every male family member for the past two generations has died in various ways, but always before they turn thirty. Despite this, Du Li An (Vivian Sung) falls for him and endeavours to break the curse. But that is only the beginning of their story.

What makes The Age of Goodbyes such a lovely and moving film to watch is how it treats love as it is. This wonderful thing between people that lingers with you, even when the person you love is gone. It is also incredibly painful, like a curse: you keep loving the person you can no longer seek or touch. In Edmund Yeo’s drama, we see this in all its ambitious, at times purposefully unwieldy glory. This is a fascinating exploration of lives shaped by things that cannot be left behind, with only writings to keep their story living.

The narrative structure of The Age of Goodbyes is particularly compelling, moving between decades in intriguing ways, with characters seeing those from the past, often as they read the words that have been written. The timelines continually shifting keeps us continually on our toes as the full history of the family is presented to us. We see how the passage of time refuses to heal old wounds, reshaping the characters in interesting ways. This storytelling approach works for the most part, but on occasion we almost trip over the dramatic web Yeo has woven from Li Zi Shu’s novel.

What is so investing about the way that Yeo tells the story (forgive me, I haven’t read the book,) is that it feels like an heirloom; the stories we are hearing and that Kai (Troy Liu) is reading in the current generation of the family feel as if they are stories being passed down about your family that you never knew (I can’t even tell you the amount of takes I heard about my parents at each of their funerals.) It is something that feels almost tragic. A story of people we have known all our lives or known of, but we never got to meet them. At least here in The Age of Goodbyes, our characters meet them in roundabout ways. By the way, get ready for maybe the latest title card I have seen in a film for quite some time.

Vivian Sung is the backbone of The Age of Goodbyes in an absolutely incredible performance. Rarely does she go big with her emotive actions; instead, she keeps things small, but is wholly effective at pulling at you. The little turns back to the camera get to you as she copes with the grief of losing someone without, at the time, knowing whatever happened to them. Without her, the film does not succeed nearly as well as it does.

Visually, The Age of Goodbyes is gorgeous. The cinematography does some great things here. Yeo and Chi-Wen Chen work tremendously together, so even when you’re impatient with the glacial pacing, you can’t help but love the shots they have conjured up. A very simple one is when Du Li An is talking to Mong Sang in the doorway of her restaurant; she moves out of shot, except for her hand, as the camera focuses on the movements of her fingers- a simple shot and idea that tells so much of what our character is feeling. It is moments like this, small moments shot perfectly.

Ultimately, The Age of Goodbyes is an impossibly thoughtful and careful film that leaves a lingering sense of melancholy. It recognises that moving on is rarely as simple as leaving something behind, and that some people continue to occupy a space in our lives long after they have disappeared from them. Sometimes, saying goodbye is not a single moment but something that takes a lifetime to understand.

★★★★

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