The 28th edition of the Far East Film Festival in Udine opened just five days after the Hong Kong Film Awards ceremony — the most prestigious film prize in Hong Kong. Expectations were high for the Italian premiere of the performance that earned Malaysian actress and model Fish Liew the Best Actress award. In Someone Like Me, directed by Wai Ching Tam, her role is genuinely demanding. She plays Mui, a young woman with cerebral palsy who uses a powered wheelchair. She moves with considerable independence and leads a fairly autonomous life — at least when she steps outside the home she shares with her overprotective mother. When she learns about a program designed to support emotional and sexual needs in people with disabilities, she decides to take part. In Hong Kong, such support relies on volunteers rather than the formal professional frameworks found in Taiwan or Japan. The film echoes the Italian documentary Because of My Body (2020), which follows a young woman with spina bifida and her OEAS worker — a professional figure specializing in emotional, affective, and sexual support that remains officially unrecognized in Italy, just as in Hong Kong. As in that documentary, the fictional Mui falls for a volunteer she is never supposed to see again after their scheduled sessions — a volunteer who, for his part, finds her quite attractive. Fish Liew studied the physical movements and vocal patterns of people with cerebral palsy with meticulous care in order to portray them convincingly. The film not only critiques Hong Kong society's reluctance to openly address the emotional needs of people with disabilities — it also makes a pointed case against the paternalistic, overprotective treatment imposed on those deemed incapable of making their own decisions, a treatment that risks unjustly curtailing their personal freedoms. All of this is valid and necessary. But the question remains: was there truly no actress with cerebral palsy in Hong Kong — or in the broader Cantonese-language film world — capable of playing Mui? Acting almost always involves imitation, but not all forms of imitation are equally acceptable. By casting the well-intentioned Fish Liew in this role, does the film not risk, paradoxically, reinforcing the very idea that certain activities are beyond the reach of certain people — the exact opposite of its own message?
Watch the trailer for Someone Like Me
The same casting question clearly does not arise when depicting degenerative memory conditions — by their very nature, people living with such conditions cannot memorize a script. Playing a man with Alzheimer's disease is the latest challenge taken on by the legendary Jackie Chan, far better known for blending martial arts and comedy across both Hong Kong cinema and Hollywood. In Unexpected Family, the debut feature of Chinese director Li Taiyan, he plays a retired weightlifter who has spent years waiting for his son to come home. When a young drifter arrives in town, the old man becomes convinced he has finally found him. The imposter assembles a makeshift family around the elderly man — a fake daughter-in-law, a fake mother-in-law, and a longtime friend of the weightlifter — to sustain the illusion. Now well into his seventies, Jackie Chan has not abandoned the physical prowess he is famous for (special effects notwithstanding), but here he pairs it with a mental fragility he has never before shown on screen. That fragility never hardens into loneliness, thanks to the support of this ragtag, improvised family. As is common in many East Asian films, the second half tips toward sentimentality: memories buried beneath the illness resurface with force, casting new light on much of the protagonist's earlier behavior. Yet what lingers most is the creative commitment of the community around him — people who almost rewrite the past to make a hazy present more bearable, and who care for those in need with far more empathy than any professional could.