Already Tomorrow In Hong Kong plays less like a will-they-won’t they romance and more like a two-hour OKCupid date with small talk and minimal chemistry.
The film opens with Ruby (Jamie Chung), an Angeleno visiting Hong Kong for the first time sans GPS, unable to locate her friends. As fate would have it, Josh (Bryan Greenberg), an expat New Yorker who has been living in Hong Kong for nearly a decade, offers to guide her to meet her friends.
As they walk, they talk about where they are from, their respective disconnect to their heritage, what they do for a living, and what they wish they were doing instead. Not exactly gripping. As they are about to reach their destination, Ruby decides to bail on her friends and asks Josh to join her for a drink. Perhaps this is where the sparks will really fly. However, the evening ends abruptly when Ruby realizes Josh has not been forthcoming with certain details of his life.
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One year later, by chance, the two cross paths again in Hong Kong on a ferry to Kowloon. After the two make amends for the unpleasantness of their previous parting, they take an extremely long walk and catch up on how their lives have changed over the course of the year. Ruby is now living in Hong Kong full time. Josh who had followed Ruby’s advice a year prior has left his cushy job in finance to write a novel. Both are in complicated relationships. The attraction is still there. The film ends leaving us in suspense, will they follow their hearts or will they be mature and just be Facebook friends?
The most charming performance of the film is delivered by a cameo from a local street fortune-teller they encounter. The audience does not learn much about the characters, except perhaps that Josh is a 35-year-old man-child who quit his job and now orders Red Bull vodkas and Ruby thinks she is unique and sassy because she enjoys watching reruns of Seinfeld.
Emily Ting makes her directorial debut by creating an enchanting homage to the urban nightlife of Hong Kong while simultaneously tips her hat to the acclaimed film, Before Sunrise. Ting has written dialogue that seems very real, however, nothing about the characters’ relationship suggests it is a once in a lifetime attraction worth derailing the characters’ current paths.
