Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity

Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity (2002)

Twelve-year-old Mindy Ho inexpertly tries Taoist magic to fix her single mother's financial situation and seemingly hopeless romantic prospects.

Date of release
2002-09-07
TMDB
6.9 / 10 (12)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Comedy, Drama, Romance
Director
Mina Shum

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Vancouver

Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity is a 2002 Canadian comedy-drama film directed by Mina Shum and written by Shum and Dennis Foon. The film stars Valerie Tian as a 12-year-old girl attempting to fix her single mother's financial and romantic situation through the usage of taoist magic. Three stories of unrelated people connect as a result of her charms. The movie was produced by Shaftesbury Film Inc. and Massey Productions Ltd. in association with Chum Television. The film was filmed in Vancouver, Canada.

Production

Mina Shum originally planned on creating three different films. As she wrote each one, she discovered that the stories were interconnected, and decided to combine them into a single movie. With the idea, she decided to work alongside Dennis Foon in order to work the script into a higher standard. Shum then cast her best friend, Sandra Oh, as the main character of her movie. The rest of the characters were cast across three generations of people.

Mina Shum utilizes an Asian color sensibility in order to convey themes within her movie. She pairs each word within the title to a color that can be seen consistently throughout the movie. Blue represents long life, red represents happiness, and gold represents prosperity. The color schemes within certain characters frames then gives insight to their themes.

Mina Shum has also stated that "the theme [of all my films] is 'You have one life, so you have to live who you really are'."

Mina Shum applies many techniques to ensure that the movie feels like it takes place in an authentic Chinese-Canadian community. One key distinguishing characteristic of this movie is its almost entirely Asian cast. Drifting from the traditionally non-Asian Hollywood cinema, Mina Shum cast every main character as an Asian. Shum then lights her scenes with soft and dim light in order to parallel the overcast skies that Vancouver often experiences.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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