Tape Review: Raindance Film Festival 2025

Bizhan Tong remakes Richard Linklater’s psychodrama Tape for a new generation

On the night before his big film festival debut, fledgling director Jon (Kenny Kwan) meets up with his old high school best friend Wing (Adam Pak) in a Hong Kong Airbnb. The two men’s lives have diverged massively in the 15 years since they left school; while Jon has transformed into a polished and pressed success Wing has stagnated, drifting around dead-end jobs in Thailand and making ends meet by dealing pot to teenagers.

For all that Jon might think Wing a waster, the other man has a trick up his sleeve. Their chilled evening plans are derailed when Wing invites Amy (Selena Lee) to join them – Wing’s high school girlfriend and Jon’s one time hook up. As the trio reminisce about the events of a pivotal graduation party and realise that each of them remember it differently, long buried secrets are dragged into the light and the exact nature of their romantic and sexual relationships fall under inspection. Truths will be tested, moralities questioned, and the trio’s realities will ultimately never be the same again.

Tape is a Cantonese language remake of the 2001 Richard Linklater film of the same name – with both being inspired by a 1999 play by Stephen Belber. The original movie is a hidden gem amongst Linklater’s low fi early career talkies – a tight 90 minutes of nothing but three people talking to each other in a room. Tape’s themes around consent, power and perception hold up remarkably well 25 years later, and director Bizhan Tong said he was drawn to remake it in the wake of the MeToo movement. Recognising that the movement had never really reached Asia and discussions around sexual misconduct remain culturally taboo – transporting this story to Hong Kong provided fresh perspective on an already compelling premise.

Tape is a gripping psychological drama that (providing you haven’t seen the original) never goes in the direction you’d expect. A tense chamber piece, it buzzes with energy despite it’s restrictive setting, allowing tension to ebb and flow as each of the three characters pushes and pulls to control the narrative.

Where Uma Thurman was the bombshell of the original Tape, Selena Lee is similarly the stand out in this production. While the two men become entangled in a toxic battle of masculinity pitting ‘nice guy’ against ‘white knight,’ Lee’s complex portrayal of both strength and fragility is truly remarkable. She’s an enigmatic character on paper, but Lee makes her richly layered – a woman determined to be more than just a plot device in someone else’s story.  

For those particularly familiar with the original film you’ll find much of the script replicated faithfully here in what is nearly a scene for scene remake, though Tong and his co-writers do make some small changes. The biggest of these is a key conversation between Wing and Amy towards the end of the film. Where Uma Thurman’s Amy and Ethan Hawke’s Vinny seemed to be agents of chaos whose true intentions remained ambiguous perhaps even to themselves, Tong is a bit clearer with the characters motivations in his version.

Whether there is enough difference in Tape 2024 to make it worth watching if you already know the original will be a matter of personal choice. Though I love the grungy chaos of the original and the fact that Linklater leaves the audience to draw their own conclusions out of the mess, this polished new version that seeks to inject more actual lived experience into its female character has its merits too. Powered by three terrific performances and a story that feels as fresh now as it did 25 years ago, Tape makes for a compelling if stressful watch.

Tape was screened as part of the Raindance Film Festival 2025. A UK cinema release is expected later this year