Summary
This investigative drama tackles the problems of the increasingly fraught healthcare system in Hong Kong, but the themes of social responsibility are universal.
If you’ve ever spent any amount of time in a care home, whether it is working there or visiting a loved one, you will no doubt be aware of just how important but emotionally overwhelming it can all be. Society’s most vulnerable need our most empathetic care, yet stories and cases of institutional neglect remain far too common. This is especially true in Hong Kong, where overcrowding of public facilities has led to people relying on less regulated private centres.
Director Lawrence Kan takes inspiration from real cases to present the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of issues with caring for people with disabilities in Hong Kong’s health care system. He follows the fictional Kay (Jennifer Yu), a journalist who goes undercover in the Rainbow Bridge care facility and bring the misdeeds into the titular daylight.
Posing as someone’s granddaughter, Kay initially encounters expired food, dead rats, and physical abuse of the residents. Once she brings this case to the attention of the media, it starts Kay down a crusading path of exposing the higher-ups who allow it to happen, and the more serious allegations of ongoing sexual abuse.
Perhaps what’s most surprising about Kan’s film is that it doesn’t take the typical straight path of the plucky reporter out to get justice. The failure of the healthcare industry is framed against the decline of newspaper journalism, so there’s a constant sense that Kay is scrambling to bring attention to these urgent needs.
Kan takes the time to humanise the residents as well. There’s a resident estranged from family desperately wanting to go to his granddaughter’s wedding. Another elderly man used to be a sailor, and ponders “Now I’m on dry land, what is there to hope for?” These encounters aren’t simply there for emotional manipulation, but as constant reminders of the human cost of inaction, and that ageing and mortality are what most of us will contemplate later in life.
While the facelessness of institutional problems aren’t exactly cinematic, Kan’s film makes live-in director, the manipulative Chief Cheung, the focal point of Kay’s investigations in the second half. Having convinced himself he is doing right by those in his care, his interactions and abuses of intellectually disabled residents are difficult to watch, while also making a powerful case for reform.
IN BROAD DAYLIGHT offers no easy answers, recognising the cultural and logistical obstacles Hong Kong healthcare has yet to overcome. If one abusive centre is closed down, then where do the residents go next? Closing text tells us that people still have an average 8-16 years waiting time for spots in public care, a statistic that is no doubt not isolated to Hong Kong. Until this broader issue is addressed, there is still much work to be done.
2023 | Hong Kong | DIRECTOR: Lawrence Kwan | WRITERS: Lawrence Kwan, Fung Li, Tong Chui Ping | CAST: Bowie Lam, Jennifer Yu, David Chiang | DISTRIBUTOR: New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) | RUNNING TIME: 106 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 14-30 July 2023 (NYAFF)
