This film is part of Rentals
The Receptionist
A Taiwanese graduate begins work at a massage parlour, in this illuminating and authentic depiction of the migrant experience at London's margins.
Drama 2016 102 mins
Director: Jenny Lu
Overview
Unable to find a job, Tina (Teresa Daley), a Taiwanese graduate living in London, starts working in an illegal massage parlour as a receptionist. As she gradually comes to know the women in this most dysfunctional of artificial families, where sex lies at the core of everything, she sees how they struggle to find a way to make their lives work, amid an undercurrent of violence and palpable danger.
Writer-director Jenny Lu based her pertinent script on the experiences of real-life subjects, lending her film an authentic, documentary-like power. Her debut feature gained a prize at the Asian American International Film Festival and it's an illuminating and vital depiction of the migrant experience at London's margins.
sexual violence, strong sex referencesRelated
Drama
Room at the Top
Drama 1958 117 mins Director: Jack Clayton
Jack Clayton directs this romantic, love-triangle drama featuring Simone Signoret in an Oscar-winning performance.
Mary Queen of Scots
Period drama 2018 124 mins Director: Josie Rourke
Saoirse Ronan is Mary Stuart, facing off against Margot Robbie's Elizabeth I in this striking, feminist take on 16th-century history.
Beautiful Boy
Drama 2018 121 mins Director: Felix Van Groeningen
Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet give blistering performances as a father and son in this gripping story of a family dealing with addiction over many years.
Where Hands Touch
Drama 2017 122 mins Director: Amma Asante
Amma Asante (Belle, A United Kingdom) presents this rites-of-passage story of a bi-racial teen struggling for survival in Nazi Germany.
Girl
Drama 2018 106 mins Director: Lukas Dhont
Lukas Dhont's breathtaking debut feature encompasses the heartache, courage, and punishing training of a ballerina transitioning in her teenage years.
Donbass
Drama 2018 121 mins Director: Sergei Loznitsa
This disturbing new black comedy from Sergei Loznitsa (In the Fog) examines the civil conflict in Ukraine through the prism of the absurd.
Chinese Britain on Film
The Flame of Love
Melodrama 1930 75 mins Director: Richard Eichberg
Chinese-American star Anna May Wong dazzles as a Chinese dancer forced to give herself to a Russian General in order to save her brother.
Piccadilly
Crime 1929 109 mins Silent Director: E.A. Dupont
The glitter of Jazz Age clubland meets the Far East (of London) in this stunningly restored silent classic, starring Anna May Wong.
Lilting
Drama 2013 86 mins Director: Hong Khaou
Ben Whishaw stars in an intimate portrait of two strangers brought together by the common language of grief.
We Went to Wonderland
Documentary 2008 72 mins Director: Xiaolu Guo
British-Chinese filmmaker Xiaolu Guo follows her ageing parents' journey to the West as they visit Europe. A rare chance to see one of Guo’s most personal films.
Ping Pong
Comedy 1986 100 mins Director: Leong Po-Chih
A young lawyer has to execute the will of a Chinese man found dead in a phone box in a witty comic thriller - the first British-Chinese feature film.
Soursweet
Drama 1988 111 mins Director: Mike Newell
Hong Kong newlyweds seek a fresh start in 60s Britain, but fall foul of the Triad underworld in this adaptation of Timothy Mo's blackly comic novel.
New
XY Chelsea
Documentary 2018 94 mins Director: Tim Travers Hawkins
Telling the historic story of whistleblower Chelsea Manning; the journey of her fight for survival and dignity, and her transition from prisoner to a free woman.
My Death Is a Mockery
Crime 1952 69 mins Director: Tony Young
Hop aboard for a choppy Channel crossing with this bleak, bullet-spattered sea-smuggling crime drama.
Room at the Top
Drama 1958 117 mins Director: Jack Clayton
Jack Clayton directs this romantic, love-triangle drama featuring Simone Signoret in an Oscar-winning performance.
Mary Queen of Scots
Period drama 2018 124 mins Director: Josie Rourke
Saoirse Ronan is Mary Stuart, facing off against Margot Robbie's Elizabeth I in this striking, feminist take on 16th-century history.
Beautiful Boy
Drama 2018 121 mins Director: Felix Van Groeningen
Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet give blistering performances as a father and son in this gripping story of a family dealing with addiction over many years.
Colette
Biopic 2017 112 mins Director: Wash Westmoreland
This witty, Belle Époque-era biopic stars Keira Knightley and Dominic West as literary couple Colette and Willy, whose relationship rewrote social and gender rules.