In his Lucky Lu film review, Chris Harrison calls the Lloyd Lee Choi one of his “pleasant surprises” from TIFF 2025.
Lucky Lu tells the story of Lu Jia Cheng (Chang Chen), a New York delivery driver who’s struggling with money issues as his wife and daughter fly out from China to join him. Lu may have arrived as an immigrant with grand ideas of running a successful restaurant, but this film is not a tale of bright lights in the big city and the “American Dream.”
Canadian director Lloyd Lee Choi trades the typical aerial shots of the city’s iconic sideline for something grounded, and often somber and grey. There’s a depiction of the fast-paced bustle of the city known for its impatience, but rather than people bounding between big business deals, the audience sees people, weary and worn, trudging along, dragging themselves to places they’d rather not be.
Lu inhabits a world, and a community, where everyone is one bad break away from losing it all, and everyone needs a few bucks, but few have extra on hand, and even fewer have the means to get the money to pay them back. Nobody is entirely reliable, but there’s still a real sense of community, of various uncles and aunties trying to make things work, no matter how flawed they may be.
The camera stays affixed to street level, shaking as it follows him through dimly lit alleys and side streets. Chang’s range as an actor is on full display here, as his character couldn’t be more different from the boisterous Chen Zhen in Netflix’s Suriname. The exhaustion on his face is palpable in the film’s many close-up shots, as plan A, B, and C all fail to get him the money he needs to make rent and his desperation level slowly increases. His face is always expressive, even in stillness.
Chen’s performance really shines when he gets to share the scene with Lu’s wife Si Yu (Fala Chen) and daughter Yaya (Carabelle Manna Wei), who insists that she must be called by her new English name, Queenie. While the A plot may be Lu’s attempts to avoid getting evicted on his family’s very first day in town, his relationship with Yaya is the highlight of the film. Yaya is blunt, and even occasionally mean in the way that kids can be, but Yaya’s curiosity and emotional intelligence are endearing. Lu, ever the dreamer, is always promising more than he can deliver and Yaya can tell something is amiss (and the audience knows this thanks to a stellar performance from Wei).
The writing is strong throughout – the characters feel genuine and believable and the translation is top-notch – and the film manages to stick the ending with a poignant final shot. I went into Lucky Lu not knowing what to expect, but this wound up being one of the pleasant surprises of the festival for me.
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