‘Big Little Things’ review: A gay Chinese woman invents a boyfriend to appease her family in candid, personal debut

Dir/scr. Michelle Zhou. Hong Kong SAR/USA. 2026. 110mins

A white lie takes on a life of its own when Lei (a magnetic Cuishan Liang), who is in a committed relationship with another woman, attempts to cover the truth from her parents. She pays a man to pose as her boyfriend during a visit to her family in Harbin, in the north of China, to celebrate the Lunar New Year. But a decision which was intended to spare her parents pain does the opposite, while also straining her relationship with her girlfriend Li Bei (Jialing Sun). This pensive, handsomely photographed first feature is a personal work for writer/director Michelle Zhou, inspired by her own experience of being introduced to the family of her same sex partner, the film’s producer Chun Yu, as ’a friend’ – and the subsequent fall out once the truth became clear.

Combines unshowy emotional candour with a strikingly cinematic use of colour

This personal element of the story, plus Zhou’s elegant restraint as a director, should boost the film’s prospects following its world premiere in Venice Horizons. The film combines unshowy emotional candour with a strikingly cinematic use of colour; Lei’s pink pixie cropped hair provides a motif in a vivid colour palette which also features plenty of mint green and zingy neon tones. As such, it should have a healthy life at LGBTQ focused festivals and events going forward.

Lei’s overbearing mother (Ling Hu) has strong opinions on her daughter’s life, and doesn’t hold back in expressing them. Following her most recent visit to the apartment that the two young women share in Beijing, she leaves a voice message: “Two girls living together – you should keep your toothbrushes and underwear separate to avoid cross-infection.” Lei laughs at the absurdity of her mother’s suggestion, but still can’t bring herself to confront her parents with the truth. It’s a source of annoyance for her fiery girlfriend, who feels that Lei’s conflict-averse approach is a personal rejection.

The idea of introducing her family to a sham boyfriend seems to Lei to be a neat way of getting her mother off her back for a while. Yao (Bin Yu) – a tattoo artist and Lei’s client at an agency which helps Chinese students apply for overseas university courses – is as suitable a candidate as any. But Yao takes his role seriously. “Your mum and dad, are they happy with me?” he asks earnestly at one point. And the complicity between Lei and Yao leads to an unanticipated degree of intimacy, blurring the lines between the fiction and reality. Meanwhile, Lei’s extended family drops not-so-subtle hints about marriage and children.

Various aspects of the filmmaking stress the precarious nature of lies and secrets. Repeated shots of the banks of cameras that surveil the Chinese population are a reminder of just how difficult it is to hide the truth when you are being watched at all times. And deft sound design lets us tune into intimate snippets from the conversations of strangers, offering brief windows into private moments. The score, working in tandem with the picture’s creative soundscape, is more conventional – it’s wistfully melodic and largely piano-based, and it floats through the film like the snowflakes of the bitterly cold Harbin winter.

Perhaps the boldest filmmaking choice is the casting of non-actor Hai Yu, the real-life father of Zhou’s girlfriend, and a key participant in the personal drama which inspired the film. Yu plays Lei’s father in the film; the therapeutic experience of confronting the existing generational tensions through cinema is described by Zhou as a “radical reconciliation”. And Yu is rather good as the taciturn father who offers a few terse wise words by way of an olive branch to Lei: “Go live your life. Live it well. Call your mother when you can, it will make her happy.”