When Mom counting to three means trouble

"I'll count to three — one, two…"

"Okay, Mom."

For most people, those words belong to childhood: a familiar warning from a mother, followed by the instinctive response of a child who knows exactly what comes next.

For Hong Kong actress Kara Wai, 66, and singer-actor Lars Huang, 27, the phrase carries a resonance that bridges generations. In their new film Keep the Beat, the two play a mother and son bound by this small but instantly recognizable command — a childhood memory they both know well.

The film's Chinese title, Shu Dao San (Count to Three), captures that shared experience. For director Sun Lin, the phrase is almost a "magical spell" — one capable of unlocking a collective memory among generations of Chinese audiences. It also provided the spark for the script.

Written and directed by Sun, a graduate of the Beijing Film Academy, Keep the Beat centers on Zhan Yumei, a dance teacher played by Wai. After losing her son in a car accident, she becomes desperate to maintain a connection with him. Her search leads her to Yu Jingyang, the young man who received her son's heart through organ donation.

Yu, a volunteer played by actor Zhang Youhao, has troubles of his own. With his father in prison, he lives with his aunt, who is raising two children and depends on her husband, a financially struggling delivery worker. But as Zhan digs deeper into the truth surrounding her son's death, her seemingly accidental encounter with Yu takes on a more complex and unsettling meaning.

For Wai, the role also hits close to home. It is the second time she has portrayed a mother whose love is both deeply devoted and potentially suffocating. The actress, who grew up in modest circumstances, says the character brought back memories of her own mother, who took 3-year-old Wai to sell chewing gum on the streets of Wan Chai to help support the family.

Financial hardship pushed Wai into the workforce at an early age. At 12, she began working as a dancer and eventually caught the attention of director Chang Cheh, who cast her as the swordswoman Mu Nianci in The Brave Archer, adapted from the wuxia classic The Legend of the Condor Heroes by late master Jin Yong, also known as Louis Cha.

Wai has said in previous interviews that caring for her mother after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease transformed her understanding of their once-intense relationship. Learning to care for a vulnerable parent, the actress gradually came to see her mother's overwhelming love in a new light.

"In my 20s, I still found my mother's love overwhelming — I still felt she was too possessive of me. For instance, when I came home exhausted and just wanted to sit for a while before taking a shower and removing my makeup, she would have already boiled water and would urge me to go wash up," Wai tells China Daily.

"But as I grew older, and she grew older too, I slowly came to realize that I need that kind of love. I need someone to 'hold me close' and love me deeply, because time passes, and one day that love will slip away," she says, adding that this realization has led her to think more deeply about the balance between love and freedom.

"A mother may love her child deeply, but she also needs to ease up a little and try to understand her child's heart — only then can she give love in the right direction," she says.

Huang, meanwhile, brings a younger generation's memories of the same parenting style to the film. A native of Northwest China's Gansu province who later studied at Berklee College of Music in the United States, the singer-actor grew up far from Hong Kong but was familiar with the logic behind "counting to three".

"I also know all too well the power behind 'counting to three'," Huang recalls, bursting into laughter.

His mother was usually loving and doting, but she became strict when it came to piano practice. She would keep a clothes hanger nearby while he played — not as a threat, he says, but as a reminder. If he did not take his practice seriously, the familiar "one, two, three" would be followed by her reaching for the hanger.

The same rule applied to mealtimes: if he dawdled or refused to eat, his mother would count to three and then clear the table, leaving him to go hungry for that meal.

The project has also given the two performers a window into the changing Chinese film industry. China now has more than 90,000 cinema screens across more than 15,000 theaters, the most in the world.

Wai first visited the Chinese mainland in the 1990s to shoot a film jointly produced by the mainland and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Since then, she has watched the industry evolve in its storytelling, production and visual effects.

"I have great hopes for Chinese cinema. The reason I haven't retired is that I'm still witnessing this era — I want to see it unfold step by step. Right now, it's a time of blooming diversity, and that's truly wonderful," Wai says.

Her commitment to the new film was equally evident during production, according to Sun. One particularly difficult scene takes place outside a morgue, where Zhan, devastated by her son's death, tears up the organ donation form he had signed and then eats the shredded pieces.

Wai volunteered to bite into and swallow the pieces of paper for real, believing the extreme act would better convey the character's anguish and emotional breakdown, Sun recalls.

Sun hopes the film will leave audiences with more than the memory of a familiar childhood countdown. Behind the seemingly simple "one, two, three" is a more difficult question: how can parents and children learn to love one another without losing sight of each other's boundaries?

She encourages audiences to use the film as an opportunity to reflect on healthy parent-child relationships — ones that, in her view, "must be built on listening and equality".