European Festival Premiere | In Competition
Hong Kong, 2024 (original) / 2025 (extended), 140’, Cantonese
Directed by: Anselm Chan
Screenplay: Anselm Chan, Cheng Wai-kei
Cinematography (color): Anthony Pun
Editing: William Chang, Curran Pang
Art Direction: Yiu Hon-man
Music: Wan Pin-chu
Producers: Jason Siu, Anselm Chan, Chan Sing-yan
Cast: Dayo Wong (Dominic Ngai), Michael Hui (Master Man), Michelle Wai (Kwok Man-yuet), Chu Pak-hong (Ben Kwok), Catherine Chau (Jade), Paul Chun (Uncle Ming), Elaine Jin (Lin), Chung Suet-ying (Suey), Rosa Maria Velasco (Miss Yan), Rachel Leung (grieving lover), Michael Ning (Mr Lai)
Date of First Release in Territory: November 9th, 2024 (original); April 4th, 2025 (extended)
In 2023, Jack Ng’s mid-budget courtroom drama A Guilty Conscience defied expectations and became Hong Kong’s highest-grossing local film ever. And now that feat has happened again, with Anselm Chan’s The Last Dance – an intricate personal drama centred on a funeral business – becoming the new all-time top local film. Chan’s film secured the honour within just a month of its November 2024 opening day, having tapped into moods in society and drawing exquisite performances from its stars.
Top billed is popular comedian Dayo Wong, currently on a streak with hits like A Guilty Conscience. Wong plays Dominic Ngai, an entrepreneur who saw his wedding planner business wiped out in the pandemic. A new opportunity emerges in funeral services after longtime girlfriend Jade (Catherine Chau) vouches for him to her mortician uncle, who’s looking to move to Canada. On offer is partnership in a small funeral firm alongside co-owner Master Man (Michael Hui), and Dominic is quick to accept. Surely funerals aren’t so different from weddings, he thinks: It’s all about pleasing the customers and putting on a show, right?
Not so fast, the grumpy and traditional Master Man soon advises. He’s the in-house Taoist master who conducts the funeral ceremony to break hell’s gates, which leads the dead out of the underworld and helps them be reincarnated. And to him what’s most important is putting one’s heart into work and caring for the departed. Dominic first tries to go his own way, upselling with tacky trinkets, making the events mimic wedding bashes, and aiming to please those in mourning while helping bring feelings of closure. After the first funeral collapses into farce and an attempt to help a grieving mother enters taboo territory for Master Man, Dominic learns hard lessons on the trade. But perhaps the newbie holds ideas the old grouch would be wise to take on board too.
Anselm Chan, who previously directed small comedies, had plenty to play with in a look at the Hong Kong funeral trade. By capturing the break hell’s gates ceremony, he not only recorded cultural heritage but offered a thrilling sight. Captured as well is a dark side, with women excluded from funeral practices. Master Man’s long-suffering paramedic daughter Yuet (Michelle Wai) puts a face to not only sexism and misogyny in her close circle, but also wider Hong Kong. Further social topics are reflected too: emigration, economic hardship, a falling birth rate and the handling of death, as well as just a general malaise in the population given recent years’ sociopolitical pressures. “There are a lot of troubled souls,” as Dominic puts it in a now much-quoted line. “Living can be hell.”
Sounds like a recipe for bleak viewing, but Chan treads lightly through tricky ground. Casting top comedians Dayo Wong and Michael Hui alongside each other means their banter comes with a dry wit and, in Wong’s case, an approachable everyman demeanour. The film offers Hui another strong turn in serious drama, here stubborn in traditional ways to the point of straining family relations to breaking point. And Chan leaves room for hope, bringing life-affirming closure to events and, in the process, catharsis for his audience.
The Last Dance headed into this April’s Hong Kong Film Awards with 18 nominations, and fans had been quizzing the director on providing a longer version as promised by Dayo Wong. That’s now here with the extended cut, with Chan adding deleted scenes to help expand characters and give more reason for moviegoers to double dip on Hong Kong cinema’s latest phenomenon.
Anselm Chan
Hong Kong-born Anselm Chan entered the film industry as a screenwriter. His early film writing credits included Super Fans (2007) and the Chinese New Year comedies Hotel Deluxe (2013) and Hello Babies (2014), and he has also been active as a screenwriter for Hong Kong and mainland Chinese television and a novelist. Long a comedy specialist, Chan debuted as a film director in 2021 with the comedy Ready o/r Knot and followed it up with Ready o/r Rot in 2023. The Last Dance (2024) is his third film as director.
FILMOGRAPHY
2021 – Ready o/r Knot
2023 – Ready o/r Rot
2024 – The Last Dance