The Home Song Stories

The Home Song Stories centres on Rose Hong, a nightclub singer from Hong Kong who leaves her life there for a naval man and settles with him in suburban Australia during the 1960s. She arrives with her two children, Tom and May, and the household soon proves unstable. Rose moves through a series of relationships with men, each one ending, while her children largely raise themselves. The story unfolds through Tom's perspective as he looks back on his mother and on the family's attempts to put down roots far from home.

Tony Ayres wrote and directed the film, his first as director; his next feature came several years later. Joan Chen plays Rose, with Qi Yuwu as Joe, Joel Lok as Tom, Irene Chen as May, Steven Vidler as Bill and Gabrielle Chan as Winnie. Michael McMahon and Liz Watts produced, and the film was made with support from Australian and other production bodies across four countries.

The film runs 103 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.2 from roughly a thousand votes, while on TMDB its rating is 6.1 from a much smaller number of votes. The difference between the two figures reflects above all how few users have rated it on the latter platform.