Ray Yeung’s film All Shall Be Well exposes how quickly family bonds can deteriorate and LGBTQ prejudices surface without legal protections. The film All Shall Be Well screens in the Panoram section at the 2024 Berlinale.
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In Ray Yeung’s All Shall Be Well, when Angie’s (Patra Au Ga Man) life partner, Pat (Maggie Li Lin Lin), unexpectedly dies, Angie finds herself edged out her out of all the decisions about Pat’s estate, and eventually, out of their shared apartment, too. Pat’s family justifies their behaviour by insisting on referring to Angie as Pat’s “best friend” rather than acknowledging their deep long-term romantic relationship.
Set in Hong Kong, where the cost of living is so high that owning a home is out of reach for most people, All Shall Be Well exposes how quickly family bonds can deteriorate, and prejudices can surface when money is involved. It’s also a reminder of how important it is for marginalized people, specifically queer people, to have rights in law, even if they seem to be generally accepted by the public in day-to-day interactions.
A loving couple
In the film’s early parts, we meet the loving couple doing quotidian activities: orbiting each other in the kitchen, hiking, and grocery shopping. We also see their warm interactions with Pat’s family, which suggests they’re happily integrated into it. Pat’s niece and nephew seem to see them as second parents. Things are slightly more strained with Pat’s brother, Shing (Tai Bo), who is struggling with money and work and doesn’t feel comfortable discussing it with Pat, who is wealthy and whom he envies. There are unacknowledged tensions.
An LGBTQ couple in Hong Kong without a will
When Pat unexpectedly dies without leaving a will, Hong Kong law, which doesn’t recognize LGBTQ marriages or civil partnerships unless one partner is a British national, designates her brother as the sole inheritor of her estate. Although Angie made equal contributions to paying for the apartment they lived in, her name wasn’t on the deed. This seems to be an issue with all of their shared money and assets. For example, Angie can no longer access their jointly held safety deposit box once Pat dies.
Yeung thus gestures at a certain uneven power dynamic in the relationship but never fully explores it. Pat dies early on and there aren’t many people outside of the family we meet who knew them both and might have the opportunity to opine. Nevertheless, Yeung does clarify that Pat was richer and older than Angie, and she knowingly failed to provide a will or put Angie’s name on the deed — both of which would have meant the film had no plot.
Angie claims that Pat wanted to wait until her seventieth birthday before making a will, worrying that leaving a will too early would be bad luck. Yeung leaves it ambiguous about whether this was a disingenuous comment from Pat. Much of the film is about Angie’s growing insecurity and uncertainty about Pat’s true desires because her lack of planning reads as irresponsible, at best, malicious at worst. Late in the film, a non-legally binding document reveals Pat’s desires, although nobody knows why she never signed it.
A lack of legal obligations leads to convenient discrimination
Once Shing has no legal obligations to Angie and stands to benefit from the situation, his wife pushes him to do so, believing that their immediate family is Pat’s “real” family. It starts small: they ignore Pat’s wishes for a sea burial, then push Angie to the back of the burial ceremony because ‘friends’ stand behind ‘family.’ But each step emboldens Shing and his children to dehumanize Angie by ignoring her importance in Pat’s life. If the state doesn’t recognize their romantic relationship as legitimate, why should they, especially when they have something to lose?
The film’s structure is a bit schematic, and it’s apparent early on that Angie will lose her apartment before anyone says anything. It’s too easy and convenient for the family not to do it, especially when they suddenly need another property. But it’s revealing how, even as Pat’s and Angie’s niece and nephew purport to support them and to look up to their romantic relationships as an ideal, they are not-so-quietly counting the pennies they feel they have earned from Pat’s death. They might be willing to share with Angie, but only as one of four interested parties.
Dramatizing the need for LGBTQ legal rights in the film All Shall Be Well
Still, it’s worth dramatizing how not enshrining legal rights can significantly impact the people involved. Yes, Angie and Pat could live openly as a couple without fear. The family even seemed to accept them, But without legal rights as a couple, in death, Angie finds herself without any rights at all — things she took for granted when Pat was alive, whether because Pat was there to grease the wheels or there were fewer legal barriers when Pat had a say in her own business, are suddenly unavailable to her.
In the West, the fight for marriage equality has often been reduced in the media as a fight for acceptance. But marriage rights come with real legal consequences, from custody of the estate to shared healthcare plans to joint immigration rights. All Shall Be Well is a reminder of why these rights are so important. People can behave acceptingly when they have nothing to lose, but it’s so easy to fall back on heteronormative prejudice when they stand to benefit.
Related reading/listening to Ray Yeung’s All Shall Be Well
More LGBTQ+ films: Read our review of All of Us Strangers. Check out all of our LGBTQ coverage.
More from Berlinale 2024: Read all of our Berlinale coverage.
