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| Stanley Yau and Vivian Sung in The Age of Goodbyes |
In the opening moments of The Age of Goodbyes, the captivating new film from Edmund Yeo - his fifth fiction feature thus far - we follow a sixteen-year-old student named Kai (Troy Liu) as he explores a library's basement stacks. Making his way along the brightly lit metal shelves, he discovers an aged volume with a faded green cover and yellowed pages sadly occupying a bottom shelf all to itself, all but completely forgotten. Yet something compels Kai to pick up the book and examine it, upon which he notices that, strangely, it begins on page 513. He takes the book with him and will soon begin to read it, getting pulled into the swirl of intriguing events that occurred long ago in the Malaysian city of Ipoh where he himself currently resides in the year 1990.
This opening passage quite directly ties Edmund's film to Li Zi Shu's acclaimed source novel (first published in 2010, more recently given an English translation by YZ Chin and released by Feminist Press in 2023) in its fidelity to the book's own beginning describing the discovery of a strange little book called The Age of Goodbyes that starts on page 513. But while Li amusingly contemplates, by way of a second-person "you"'s meta-literary observations, the found book's more peculiar aspects, including the strange, old-fashioned writing style of its opening and closing lines and the still-lingering smell of fresh ink suggesting few if any have bothered to even open it since its initial printing, Edmund primes us to enjoy the riches of his distinctly cinematic take in the most wonderfully straight-forward way. Kai continues along the bookshelves, the lights around him turning off row by row. Suddenly, the darkening stacks give way to the dim, inviting cavern of a movie theater in mid-screening, complete with a shimmering projection booth and assorted spectators transfixed by the show. Kai takes a seat among them, and from there the film seamlessly proceeds into the first key event in the old book's narrative, concerning a politician named Chan Kam Hoi (Kenzo Liu) who suffers a fatal heart attack in his seat during a screening in the year 1969. Following this unexpected tragedy, incense is burned and prayers chanted by a Buddhist monk in the theater - plus, as an extra measure to soothe the deceased's spirit, the staff decide to project the film he was watching, called Wings of Eternal Love, on a nightly basis just for his sake. The local women comment on the ghost's privilege of scoring free movie screenings in the afterlife while, inside the darkened auditorium, the fallen politician eerily sits and gazes upon the screen with milky white orbs in place of his eyes.
As diverting as this story strand is, the one central to The Age of Goodbyes - the film we are watching as well as the book Kai is reading - focuses on Du Li An (Vivian Sung), a strong-spirited young woman whom we first see working in the movie theater's ticket booth. She issues the doomed Chan Kam Hoi his ticket while firmly resisting his flirtations, but a moment later is left visibly flustered by the arrival of Yip Lin Sang (Stanley Yau), a handsome young Mandarin language teacher, who she treats to a first-class ticket instead of the third-class one he requested. She accompanies him on an outing to Ipoh's magnificent limestone caves, where the first sparks of romance arise between them. But any potential for a relationship between them is darkened when the hesitant Lin Sang tells Du Li An of a terrible curse that for generations has claimed the lives of every man in his family before any of them reached the age of thirty. Him already being twenty-six, he desperately searches for the elusive Dragon's Tongue plant that is said to break the curse.
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| Vivian Sung in The Age of Goodbyes |
This subplot involving the family curse and the Dragon's Tongue herb comes not from The Age of Goodbyes, but rather another story by Li Zi Shu. It is a testament to Edmund's great care and skill in adapting Li's writings into his screenplay that this compelling vein of magical realism is integrated so smoothly into the politically charged tumult of historical events that shape Lin Sang's tragic family history and, ultimately, his connection with Du Li An. Having divulged his extraordinary secret to her, the teacher gives her a brief account of the variously grisly fates that have befallen his family's men over the years, including at the hands of British oppressors during the nation's colonial era. The crucial moment for Lin Sang arrives on the very date alluded to by the page 513 device, May 13th, 1969, when the surprising advances made by the ethnic Chinese-majority Democratic Action Party and the liberal Gerakan party against the ruling Malay-centric Alliance Party in Malaysia's general election tipped the long-simmering tension between the country's Chinese and Malayan communities into a fast-spreading wave of rioting, looting, arson, and violent clashes with the police throughout Kuala Lumpur. There were many casualties, most of them Malaysian-Chinese. The police, who were afterward authorized to quickly dispose of countless unidentified bodies in mass graves, put forth an official figure of 196 deaths, but outside sources proposed a far higher amount of anywhere between 600 and over 1000 fatalities during the incident. It is in the midst of this storm of death, destruction, and confusion within Malaysia that Lin Sang suddenly disappears without a trace.
Edmund previously used cinema to explore hidden traumas of the past to great effect in his 2014 feature debut River of Exploding Durians, in which an impassioned teacher (Zhu Zhi-Ying) asks her students to research and present various cases of violence and oppression littered throughout Asian history, emphasizing to them how stories and storytelling help us maintain a meaningful connection to past events through empathy and remembrance. The Age of Goodbyes finds Edmund clearly still fascinated by the turbulent chapters of Malaysian history and the key role stories, be they faithful chronicles or tall tales, play in humanizing the participants and honoring the emotional essence of their lived experiences many years, even decades afterwards. His happy discovery of Li Zi Shu's works seems nothing short of providential, given both artists's strong sense of identity as Malaysian Chinese, deep interest in family and local histories, and tangible affection for the finer aspects of narrative art, including flexible approaches to form and the ever-reliable pleasures of genre. Li, Edmund's mother, and her family all hail from Ipoh, the verdant tin-mining boomtown on Malaysia's western peninsula where Li worked as a reporter for eight years, accruing an innate familiarity with the place and its locals that seeped into the writing of The Age of Goodbyes. For his own part, Edmund paid tribute to his mother's hometown by taking full advantage of its lushly photogenic beauty via Chen Chi-wen's breathtaking location cinematography while on the film's eclectic soundtrack, he included three songs from his mother Chik Soon Come's heyday as an accomplished singer of Mandopop-folk tunes, some of which were composed by his father Eric Yeo, a music producer.
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| Vivian Sung in The Age of Goodbyes |
The rich layers of story material that comprise The Age of Goodbyes gave Edmund the opportunity to fruitfully expand upon the scope, depth, and aesthetic beauty of his craft (well-established up to now by the bright constellation of short and feature films that make up his cinematic world), issuing the challenge of multiple time periods, a diverse ecosystem of characters, and an operatically intense emotional palette thick with desire, melancholy, and longing. The film's narrative intrigues begin to deepen relatively late into its running time - the elegant calligraphy of its main title card isn't seen until forty minutes in - when the action jumps ahead from 1969 to 1972, when Du Li An marries local gangster Steely Bo (Steve Yap) and becomes stepmother to his daughter Lau Lin (Lixuan Siow). A fresh mystery arrives in the form of Lau Lin's boyfriend Mong Sang (Stanley Yau), who happens to be the twin brother and eerily spitting image of the vanished Lin Sang. What follows is an enthrallingly twisty journey of self-discovery for Du Li An as she subtly metamorphoses from her humble origins working the ticket booth and her mother's noodle stall into the cool boss-lady persona she wears (along with a dazzling collection of elegant qipao dresses) as the wife of a crime boss to the determined owner of her own kopitiam restaurant, all the while navigating the emotional complexities of her relationships with Steely Bo, Lau Lin, and the beguiling Mong Sang. Overtop all of that lies Kai's own journey as he falls deeper into the labyrinth of past lives preserved in the book's pages, susses out the incredible connections between them and his own life in the rooms and corridors of the Mayflower motel, and deals with his own double trouble when he starts seeing a mirror version of himself named J (Troy Liu) around town.
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| Vivian Sung and Stanley Yau in The Age of Goodbyes |
Ever the skilled editor, having assembled nearly all of his own films and many of his friend and creative partner Woo Ming Jin's, Edmund deftly switches and slides between the decisive years, from 1990 to 1969, 1972, 1974, 1917, 1942, and beyond. As key moments happen and then are later revisited, echoing the often obsessive nature of subjective human memory, certain places are likewise often revisited by characters who linger and search much like the ghostly Chan Kam Hoi at the film's start, while objects and signs of totemic power - a cryptic burn mark inscribed on a wooden surface, an old British Army pistol, the pickled green chilies Lin Sang regularly adds to his usual dish at Du Li An's noodle stand while Mong Sang removes them, Lau Lin's star-shaped necklace pendant, a radiant blue qipao, and of course the old book - accumulate with feverish vividness. Not for nothing did Edmund prime French-Vietnamese composer Tôn Thất An for the project by describing it as "Hitchcock meets Almodóvar," and the music (available via Bandcamp) obligingly conjures a veritable aural feast with cascades of Vivaldiesque strings, soul-shivering wells of bass and percussion, haunting choir voices, a jaunty wedding cha-cha inspired by Bruce Lee, and elegant arrangements for cello and guzheng (an instrument featured prominently on both screen and soundtrack in Edmund's fine 2009 short The White Flower). As with any film auteur worth their salt, the key to the enchantingly sustained spells of atmosphere and vision in Edmund's films (along with his formidable intuition, experience, and expertise) has always lain in his clear love and respect for the collaborative nature of cinema, in his gift for bringing together diverse teams of remarkably talented people and drawing out the best of their abilities with his own contagious enthusiasm for both the beautiful medium in which they all work and the project at hand. This is certainly the case with the Taiwanese-Malaysian co-production of The Age of Goodbyes, which immerses us in the worlds of its nested tales with its crisp sound design (my mind's ear can still hear the sharp tearing sounds of Du Li An's movie tickets, the soothing ambient chorus of Ipoh's wildlife), the careful attention paid to its production and costume design to clearly establish each character and time period, the many sublime chiaroscuro compositions executed by the lighting and camera teams, and even a special effects department that handily brings to life the menacing jungle beast with dark fur and glowing red eyes whose unjust slaying brings the curse upon Lin Sang's family.
Of course, the whole enterprise would be inconceivable without the amazing work put forth by the actors, many of whom had to clear some tricky linguistic hurdles set by the film's diverse medley of spoken languages. For example, the central role of Du Li An required Taiwanese actress Vivian Sung to learn from scratch both Cantonese, for her interactions with her mother, other Ipoh locals, and Mong Sang, and Malaysian Hokkien for those with Steely Bo, all the while affixing a Malaysian accent to her Mandarin when conversing with Lin Sang and Lau Lin. Meanwhile, gallantly rising to the challenge of a substantial double role, the Hong Kong singer and actor Stanley Yau (best known, funnily enough, as a member of the pop group Mirror) had an acceptable accent for the Mandarin teacher Lin Sang, but had to tone it down when he spoke Cantonese as Mong Sang. The additional Taiwanese cast members, including Kenzo Liu and the talented young Troy Liu, likewise received guidance from language coaches to sound just right in their respective parts. The sonic texture of so many languages and accents - Thai and English can also be heard - faithfully reflects Malaysian society's diverse multiculturalism while the film circles and studies the intriguing figure of Du Li An, a strong Malaysian Chinese heroine impressively portrayed by Sung with appropriate glamor, nuance, and sensitivity.
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| Vivian Sung in The Age of Goodbyes |
There are many, many pleasures to discover and appreciate in The Age of Goodbyes - far too many to properly recall after a single viewing. Edmund and his team have successfully created a beautiful film designed to take root and flourish in the mind as you go over its various angles and surfaces, revisit the folds of narrative artfully arranged across its generous two hours and twenty-two minutes. In turn, it thrives on the resonating power of those special memory places that make the stories of our personal histories, those places we compulsively revisit again and again in our heads. For Du Li An, these are a sunlit spot by a lake teeming with lush greenery, the warm bustle of her kopitiam, the rooms that bear witness to her evolving relationship with Lau Lin. And, of course, the natural majesty of the limestone caves where eventually Kai peers across the caverns of time to see Du Li An resting in the sun like a mythical goddess or sphinx in repose. It is here where we might finally notice Edmund's clever decision to gradually open up the film's image, subtly casting off the narrow period-specific aspect ratios of earlier scenes to the truly cathartic expanse of widescreen, culminating here in this sublime moment of solace. Craft and technique in service of maximum emotional impact, exemplified in those special films by Hitch, Pedro, Agnès Varda, Alain Resnais, Orson Welles, David Lynch...and Edmund Yeo! And now there's this one, thoughtfully inlaid through and through with the most rewarding kind of cinematic mystery. Ironically enough, given its title, I can't wait to see it again!
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Tthe Age of Goodbyes enjoyed its world premiere at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival in the Special Presentations program. Edmund Yeo was in attendance, as were Vivian Sung, Stanley Yau, Lixuan Siow, myself, and, via a special video message for the audience, Troy Liu. It will next screen as the opening night film for the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival on November 6th, 2026. It is also nominated for four Taipei Golden Horse Awards: Best Director (Edmund Yeo), Best Adapted Screenplay (Yeo), Best Cinematography (Chen Chi-wen), and Best Art Direction (Tan Yew Swee).
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