The Last Dance review – Chinese funeral business is backdrop for arresting, life-affirming drama

Starting out as a prickly comedy in which wedding planner Dominic (Hong Kong standup icon Dayo Wong) switches to the funeral business, The Last Dance takes a sudden sombre turn. Dominic lands a seemingly unhinged client, turned down by all his competitors, who wants him to embalm her young son. As a string of putrefied matter hangs from the boy’s back while he is dressing him, Dominic realises he has already been dead for six months. It’s not the only mortician scene – and not the only note of unsettling realism with which writer-director Anselm Chan ballasts this well-constructed and punchy melodrama.

Bequeathed the funeral agent gig by his girlfriend’s retiring uncle, Dominic must get to grips with his new business partner: ball-breaking Taoist priest Master Man (Michael Hui), who performs the “breaking hell’s gate” rites that liberate departing souls. The veteran is unimpressed by the commercially oriented newcomer, who is so keen on flashy gimmicks that he commissions a paper Maserati for the funeral of someone who died in a car crash. It becomes apparent, though, that Man’s traditionalism is covering up his own grief and leads to his unbending treatment of anyone in his vicinity.

Growing into the job, Dominic realises that the two of them are complementary: “Taoist priests transcend the soul of the dead. Agents transcend the soul of the living.” And just as his protagonist freshens up the departed, Chan is skilled in breathing naturalness into melodrama; not just through macabre contrast, but also by earning the twists and contrivances through patiently handling Dominic’s transition to compassionate undertaker in a string of attentively written consultations. As deftly portrayed by Wong, his obsequious grin hides an inner strength – and Hui matches him with effortless irascibility.

There are moments of awkward plot suturing: it seems a stretch that the unbudgeable Man would concede at the last he’s been doing it all wrong. But Chan sticks the landing: a climax in which Man’s daughter Yuet (Michelle Wai), who has been held back by his antiquated sexism, comes to the fore. The arresting morbidity, the life-affirming bon mots, confident dramatic patterning, a breezy universality; these could all render The Last Dance prime remake material.