In 1964, a Chinese nightclub chanteuse named Rose Hong (the excellent Joan Chen) and her young children immigrate to Australia, so that Rose can marry a local sailor (the befuddled and bewitched Uncle Bill). A week after the wedding, she leaves her new husband for a series of fleeting encounters, cheap dives and bad men, dragging her confused, and increasingly disgruntled, kids with her. So begins director Tony Ayres' debut feature, based loosely upon the life of his own mother.

In 70s Australia, a period renowned more for bell bottoms than glamour, Rose cuts an exotic figure with her silk cheongsams and regal air. Like a faded film siren, she lurches through her life, from one man to another, but despite the self-inflicted drama, and some truly terrible decisions, Rose is never without poignancy. As her behaviour becomes more extreme, the pathos of her kids trying, and failing, to save their mother from herself becomes almost unbearable...

Joan Chen holds the screen as the beautiful and brittle Rose, a woman whose appetite for self-destruction is equalled only by her heartbreaking sadness. "A finely chiselled drama about an unstable Chinese mother struggling to reconcile her desires with her children's needs in early 70s Australia… speaks bittersweet truths about life in the Chinese Diaspora."--Variety

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