Atlanta Jewish Film Festival

It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong is one of the films screened at the Atlanta Jewish film festival on Emory’s campus. The male lead of the film, Bryan Greenberg, attended the event and answered audience questions.

The film’s cinematography follows the couple as they navigate the streets of Hong Kong. The shots of Hong Kong pay homage to the city’s vibrant personality. The colors and the sounds of the film bring Hong Kong to life, and it becomes a third character in the couple’s love story. The film is shot in the most romantic, beautiful locations in the city and the sources of light often come from the locations themselves. The film does not feature local elements of Hong Kong, portraying a very touristy picture.

Josh Silfen’s cinematography is the greatest part of this film. The varying camera angles, which often shoot the characters from behind as they walk, or shoots from next to them, help the viewer maintain his or her focus on the two leads. The distracting and colorful background is often blurred, which makes the setting seem almost dreamlike. Silfen employs these cinematographic techniques to show that surroundings are not the focus of the film; it is the couple that the viewer should pay attention to. This is ironic in a way because the locations are the attraction of the film and the thread that connects the two characters.

Silfen incorporates a traditional montage sequence, which is typical of romantic comedies, where Ruby and Josh bargain with a vendor over a selfie stick. It all seems cliché, as if the director Emily Ting is trying too hard to relate to her viewer. In a film where the premise is that the main character’s phone does not have a GPS, it is ironic that they are fighting over the millennial-oriented invention that is the selfie stick.

Their dialogue does not outshine the film’s tracking sequences, which follows as the couple walks through the streets of the city. There is not much substance to their conversation, but their chemistry is obvious. As their characters, the real-life couple, Greenberg and Chung, discuss the woes of modern relationships. The plot of the film is not very well-developed beyond their conversation, and a majority of the film follows them as they walk through the city. Although they talk about their hopes and dreams, they are very generic and surface-level. Josh is unhappy in his finance job and dreams of becoming a novelist, and Ruby gives him a speech that he finds very inspiring.

At times, Ruby does not seem to enjoy the sights that Josh is showing her. Instead of commenting on the city, she finds complaints in the lack of good Mexican food and the great misfortune that is the absence of Netflix in Hong Kong. The characters are also seemingly looking for excuses to escape from their unhappy lives with their respective significant others. They seem dissatisfied with their partners and bored with their lives in general, which does not make for the most romantic plot. There are moments where their longing for one another is palpable, but in general, their shallow conversations keeps their passion for one another deep beneath the surface.