With 1997 looming in the background, Peter Chan Ho-sun and Ivy Ho take Hong Kong’s anxiety, rootless existence, nostalgia for the colony and American dreams, and put them into the theme of Chinese people’s eternal homelessness, an imagery sustained throughout the film. The couple who drifted to Hong Kong from the mainland then the US and the Hong Kongers around them who either die or break up with their loved ones, echo the fate of legendary Taiwanese songstress Teresa Tang, who shot to fame in Hong Kong, took the mainland by storm, and died in Thailand. It’s a whole nation’s lament—melancholic, romantic. Seventeen years on, Hong Kongers are returning from overseas and heading North. Replace Tsim Sha Tsui in the film with Sanlitun in Beijing and you have the same story playing over and over again. The film is not only Peter Chan’s best work to date, it’s a classic with the strongest sense of Chinese modernity among Golden Harvest productions.

©Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

18/5

(Sat)

7:00pm

Cinema, Hong Kong Film Archive

Post-screening talk with Shu Kei and Timmy Chen

14/7

(Sun)

2:00pm

Broadway Cinematheque