Review of An Autumn’s Tale / 秋天的童话, directed by Mabel Cheung

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

Because my budget was so limited during this time, as I had very few income sources, I was thinking a lot about what I spent my money on. I don’t like spending money on streaming services to begin with me when I have a very good library branch near me, as well as the fact I know what I like. Netflix is more useful for the blog when I want to make some more money in a month, as those kinds of posts get the most views, but I’m not chasing views.

I do like a Criterion subscription here and there, but I never like paying for it for an entire year. It’s a bit expensive, and so is MUBI, which is another platform I like. So while I was unemployed, I was watching for the deals, like three months of MUBI for $1 or Criterion for $6.99 a month. I did both when I had these deals, and loaded up on all of the movies I wanted to watch.

An Autumn’s Tale is actually one of the last movies I got to before my time ran up with that subscription. They made a collection about movies in New York City, and this one stood out to me immediately, so I watched it on one sitting.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much.

Jennifer comes to New York to study and meet her boyfriend, but finds so much more.

This movie takes place during the 1980s, which is when it was filmed, so if you’re interested in old New York City before all of the gentrification and development took place, this is such a fascinating movie to watch just because of that. Our main character is Jennifer Lee, who is leaving Hong Kong behind for New York.

She's going to study in the United States and meet her boyfriend Vincent, and she’s excited about reuniting with him in a foreign new land. Her relative Samuel, also known as Pang, is asked to pick her up in New York at the airport, and he brings his buddies to get her and her stuff to his apartment. It’s kind of rundown and not what she expected, but it’ll do for now.

The first full day in the United States, Jennifer decides to wake Pang up so she can go find the train and meet up with her boyfriend. However, at the train station, she’s heartbroken to see Vincent with another girl named Peggy. Looks like he got a new girl in the mean time, and Jennifer isn’t too happy to see that.

She storms out to the car, throwing the dolls she brought for Vincent onto the ground as she leaves. Pang drives away and crushes the drolls on the way out. He ends up taking her out for a walk later to make her feel better, but the next day she acts like she doesn’t know him when they’re in a restaurant.

He ultimately ends up at her table anyway and orders food for them both, and later she tells him while building a bookshelf she has found a job babysitting. She needs another job to afford tuition, and Pang debates selling his grandfather’s watch. He buys her Broadway tickets instead, but she’s busy. She ends up coming anyways to help him get away from an NYPD officer, and he drives her to her new client’s home after.

Her new client’s friend wants Jennifer as a waitress at his restaurant, which Pang does to scope out and accidentally orders a bunch of expensive dishes. Meanwhile, drama brews when her client’s husband starts flirting with Jennifer, his wife, who hired her, gets upset and wants her gone.

Pang and his friends beat up the restaurant owner after that, and Jennifer tries to sell her dolls for money. Pang tells her about his dream of opening a restaurant on the water, while Jennifer admires an expensive watchband. Not long after this, Pang decides to go for Jennifer romantically.

On his birthday he has a party, but doesn’t tell Jennifer it was his birthday. Vincent shows up for Jennifer and says he broke up with Peggy, and Pang becomes depressed thinking he won’t have a chance with Jennifer. She goes outside and runs into the girl she babysat, Anna, and her old client asks if Jennifer wants to move in with the family to Long Island and be a full-time babysitter.

Pang sells his car to afford the watchband Jennifer wanted earlier, but then comes home to see Jennifer putting her stuff in Vincent’s car. He thinks she’s gotten back together with him, gives her his gift, Jennifer gives him a gift as well, and as they drive off, Pang tries to run after the car on the highway, but fails. He opens the gift and finds Jennifer’s grandfather’s watch, and Jennifer discovers the band in her gift.

Time passes. Anna and Jennifer are walking along the beach when she sees a restaurant called Sampan, which is what Pang always wanted to call his restaurant. She goes up to it and sees Pang there, and asks for a table for two. The movie ends there.

Overall Thoughts

I had literally never heard of this movie before I had pressed play that night, and I was so pleasantly surprised with what I was watching. The storyline itself was refreshing—I realized I had never seen a movie like this pre-2000s. I’ve seen classic immigrant stories before, especially to New York, but I want to watch more movies in this vein if I can find them.

This was also just gorgeously filmed throughout, too. The blocking and scene work makes it feel like it flows well from scene to scene, and I could feel for both of these characters. They grow throughout the film and we really do grow to love them.

I say go watch this one if you haven’t already. Movies are meant to be seen, not read about, so go watch it if you can find the movie somewhere online or on DVD.

Follow me below on Instagram, Letterboxd, and Goodreads for more.