A Simple Life
Whenever people complain to me about the lack of “realistic” movies out there, I point them to tiny gems such as Ann Hui’s A Simple Life, Hong Kong’s entry for last year’s Oscar for best foreign language film. It concerns a 72-year-old woman named Ah Tao (Deanie Ip), who has been a servant to a middle-class Chinese family for 60 years, watching the generations pass, the children grow up and mature, the elders grow old and die.
As the story begins, Ah Tao is still the servant for Roger (Andy Lau), the youngest boy in the family and its only member left in Hong Kong. She cooks for him, cleans his small apartment and watches over him like a second mother. One day, she has a stroke and is forced to move into a local nursing home. As her health deteriorates, it is now Roger’s turn to care for the woman who has always watched out for him.
