Time Still Turns the Pages (2023) on Netflix
A teacher, Cheng, finds an anonymous suicide note in his classroom bin. He asks his class monitor, Ka-yee, to find students at risk. His marriage is ending and his father is dying.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.7/102,293 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
At a Hong Kong secondary school, Cheng teaches a class preparing for the university entrance exams. When Vincent, a hearing-impaired student, pushes another boy down the staircase, Cheng punishes him, and Vincent tells him to deal with his own divorce first. Cheng then finds an anonymous note in the classroom bin; it is a suicide note. The headmaster hears of it, but the vice principal argues that the class should not be distracted before the exams, so Cheng asks the class monitor, Ka-yee, to help him work out which students may be thinking of suicide. At home, his marriage is ending and his father is dying. A second strand returns to a boyhood in a strict household, where a boy keeps a diary to please a demanding father and tries to lift his marks at school.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Time Still Turns the Pages (2023)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Nick Cheuk wrote the screenplay in 2015 based on the death of a close friend and university classmate, later altering aspects of his friend's experiences to explore the social phenomenon of student suicides in Hong Kong.
- Nick Cheuk offered the lead role of Mr. Cheng to Siuyea Lo, a mutual friend of his and of his late friend, although the character had been written as a 40-year-old; Cheuk amended the part after Lo accepted on the spot.
- Nick Cheuk handpicked comedian Ronald Cheng to play the abusive father, after watching Louis Cheung's performance in The Narrow Road, wanting to bring out the emotional side of actors known for comedy.
- Cheuk retitled the film Time Still Turns the Pages, drawing the title from the lyrics of Avenged Sevenfold's song "So Far Away".
- After filming had finished, Nick Cheuk and Keith Chan, both first-time film editors, spent an additional two years working on post-production.
- Nick Cheuk cast Henick Chou as Vincent, a character based on Cheuk's own experiences growing up at school, because he found Chou's earlier portrayals of slacker youths convincing.
