I suppose this counts as the next entry in the series of films about aging and mental deterioration. This was a critically acclaimed film in its time by Hong Kong director Ann Hui but I’ve never seen it. I’ve never quite understood why she doesn’t seem to be more recognized in the west, especially now that they’re emphasizing female directors so heavily. I’ve also found that despite this being quite a famous film, it is impossible to find it, legally or not, anywhere other than on YouTube. Unless a film is added to an online library or released as part of the Criterion Collection or something, it will probably just disappear.

May Sun is a middle-aged woman who has to find a way to balance her working life and her responsibility for taking care of her family. Though she has an excellent relationship with her mother-in-law, she is exasperated by Lin Sun, her chauvinistic and rude father-in-law. When her mother-in-law passes away suddenly, the whole family struggles to take care of Lin Sun who has trouble recognizing people and has reverted to child-like behaviors. Eventually a doctor diagnoses him with Alzheimer’s disease though he also notes that the patient is otherwise hale and healthy. May seems to be the only person in the household who is able to reach him, using various tricks to get him to behave. Meanwhile we also see her husband’s passivity and his siblings’ reluctance to care for Lin Sun as well as their own son’s reactions to his ailing grandfather.

While I’ve never seen this film, I have heard about it and so I’ve always thought that this was a very tragic film. So I was quite surprised to note that while there are indeed sad moments in it, they are more than made up for by how insistently the film tries to inject humor into everything. It would be fine if this were restricted to the character of Lin Sun but the overall tone for the film as a whole is a light one. It feels quite inappropriate to me for the film to refuse to go dark in any way, as if it isn’t taking the issue of patients with Alzheimer’s disease very seriously at all. I believe that one reason for this is because this very particular brand of Hong Kong humor was omnipresent and simply part of that era. Another, as my wife notes, is that the disease was quite new at that time and poorly understood. I don’t believe that its depiction here is in any way realistic. In particular, the film pulls its punches by front-loading Lin Sun’s poor behavior. Instead of his condition deteriorating over time, this film actually has him responding positively to May Sun’s care and improving. This makes Summer Snow an overly sentimental film that isn’t a serious attempt to show a patient being afflicted by this disease.

Such disappointments aside, this is still a well crafted film. The performances are solid and I like how each character is distinct and has arcs of their own amidst the larger story. The travails of the family are well grounded in the Hong Kong society of that era, with the cramped confines of their accommodations, the limited spaces available in the day care center for the elderly, and the need for all the adults to work, all complicating their ability to cope with disease. It is rather sobering to note how vastly better the living situation portrayed in, say, Away From Her, is compared to what we see here.

Overall I think this is still a film that is worth watching but I can see why it isn’t considered a great classic. Its tone is far too light and its portrayal of Alzheimer’s disease too soft-hearted. I’d rank this below the recent few films we’ve watched sharing these themes. I suppose we’ll watching its companion film, July Rhapsody, somewhat soon. I have watched that one before and strangely I don’t recall it having this grating sense of humor infusing the work. I hope it holds up as well as I remember it.