Everyphone Everywhere: Amos Why’s perceptive, laid-back comedy

It begins innocuously enough when Chit (Endy Chow Kwok-yin, One Second Champion), a graphic designer living on the outlying Cheung Chau island, forgets to bring his mobile phone along on his long trip into town to make the dinner date.

As he struggles to recall the address of the private kitchen where it is taking place, Chit embarks on a Kafkaesque quest to find a business phone he can borrow. His quandary deepens when he realises he must awkwardly ask his wife, Ivy (Cecilia Choi Si-wan), to make some calls – one of the attendees happens to be his first love.

The day is even worse for property agent Raymond (Peter Chan Charm-man), who fears his illegal business dealings will be exposed after his phone is hacked and his conversation record compromised.

The single father is too preoccupied with his professional career, as well as imminent plan to emigrate to the UK, to notice that his teenage daughter (Amy Tang Lai-ying) is a fledging online scammer in her own right.

Rounding out the trio is Ana (theatre actress Rosa Maria Velasco), a business executive whose marriage to her unfaithful husband is rapidly crumbling. Ironically, her chat with a phone fraudster on this day proves far more truthful and rewarding than it has any right to be.

Playful in tone and light as a breeze in its treatment of the subject of scamming, Everyphone Everywhere comes across as a very spontaneous look at human connections in which little appears definitive.

No one is stuck in a fixed role in Wong’s unlikely ode to the complexity of modern life: minor characters are sometimes seen working more than one job within a single day, and even scammers can turn out to have a conscience. It is a bit like life.

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