Review of The Soong Sisters (1997) by Mattias E — 24 Aug 2010

Soong Sisters buckles a bit under it's own weight and details are lost, as Mabel Cheung paints with her broadest strokes. The Kitaro-supplied music score only adds to the overbearing effect. The film potentially also might suffer a bit from being made in 1997, a year when Hong Kong suffered from severe handover trauma, and all relations with Beijing were handled with utmost care.

But the epic scale of Soong Sisters hardly brings out the best filmmaker in Mabel Cheung, who fairs much better in a more intimate and local context, as proven in earlier and subsequent works.