There’s a game I love to play when I am out galavanting. If I chance upon an item that has no rhyme or reason strewn on the street, I would ask my wife to tell me the story of how that thing (be it one side of a slipper or a bouquet of flowers sitting on top of a dustbin and so on) landed up there. We would both take turns to extrapolate a story and usually it will be a sad one. The game takes on a different dimension when we see an interesting looking person exhibiting an unusual behaviour or carrying an eye-popping object.
I’m Livin’ It has lots of despondent characters whose lives are at an impasse, living on desperate straits; they are just not livin’ the dream anymore. And when you see these homeless people, the game is not fun anymore. Trivialising their hard life is wrong. Nobody wants to live in abject poverty and the circumstances that drove these folks to spend every night in McDonald’s, sleeping while sitting down, is what I’m Livin’ It is about.
Let’s get something clear from the start – there is no redemption arc here. This is no The Pursuit of Happyness (2006). Not every character makes it out of the “tunnel of hopelessness”. No one will, in one moment of crystal clarity, discover a steadfast willpower to lift themselves out of the mire. They are all stuck on the hamster wheel, running tirelessly because they think that if they stop, they die. It sounds like the bleakest of stories but credit has to be showered on first-time director Wong Hing-fan who has crafted a film that humanised the motley crew of characters, making them memorable.
Bowen (Aaron Kwok) is the de facto leader with the street smarts. Once a top finance honcho, he was arrested for embezzlement and after his incarceration he could not find a job. He galvanises the plethora of “invisible” folks with well-meaning ways, but he himself is crippled with utter shame that stops him from going home. Family honour is a running theme here.
The motley crew consists of a teenage slacker (Zeno Woo) who is addicted to his handheld game and ran away from home after a banal argument; an elderly man (Alex Man) who occupies the same seat and has a different reason why he is there every night; a motor-mouth caricature artist (Cheung Tat-ming), a young mother (Cya Liu) and her young daughter whose sob story will probably be hard to comprehend by western audiences. Rounding up the group of pathetic souls is Jane (Miriam Yeung), a has-been small nightclub singer, who carried a torch for Bowen from way way back.
This is a greatest hits compilation of sad stories and demolished hopes. It can easily be episodic as it goes from character to character, but Ja Poon’s screenplay traverses the boulevard of broken dreams with ease and with an eye out for details. In the storyteller’s measured strokes, the movie doesn’t become cheapened with cheap histrionics. There is a sense of realism in the characters and you would remember them long after the movie has ended.
Aaron Kwok stands out in a self-effacing role and he looks believable in the part of a man imprisoned by his own guilt. Miriam Yeung is also a stand-out and she embodies the everyday woman who has seen better days perfectly. However, for this reviewer, the chemistry between them lacks spark. What should have been subtle fluctuations and evolving graduations between the two leads is somehow missing, at least for me.
Movies about poor people are usually of two types – they are often about how non-poor people are redeemed by coming to the aid of poor people or they are about how poor people, in a twist of fate, change their destiny through sheer will. I’m Livin’ It doesn’t do either. It lays out the harsh reality that most of the time poor people continue to be stuck in quicksand and die comfortless deaths. The ending here, though hard to watch, is right on the nose. Don’t be poor, is probably one of the more important messages here, but I feel it is more important to think about what can be done to address the plight of the homeless.
Written by Daniel Chiam
BookMyShow Singapore 
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