Comrades, Almost a Love Affair
(甜蜜蜜)
To date, this is truly my favourite Chinese film. Comrades,
Almost a Love Story is impressive even at first sight. From the
outset, Leon's stepping out of the subway provided a gloomy and depressive atmosphere
which pervaded throughout the story. Focusing its plot on two mainland lovers,
the movie is suffocated with tension of the impending return of Hong Kong to
China. On the surface, it might seem a romantic drama, but in reality, it is a
political satire of the search for a "Chinese" identity. Does it
actually exist? Hence, time is increasingly shrinking as the two, Li Chiao
(Maggie Cheung) and Lijun (Leon Lai), strive to strike it rich in the once
magnificent, but dying colony while also searching for the answer. But as Lijun
remarks, "While everyone on the Mainland wants to be in Hong Kong,
everyone in Hong Kong wants to be everywhere else." The ending is about
fate's mysterious workings, as the audience discovers for themselves that strangers
are often friends that have yet to meet. I highly recommend this film. If you
are not into romantic comedies, you should at least watch this movie just to
see Leon Lai's brilliant acting. That's right. His acting. It's hard to believe
but this film redefined his image as an HK idol. No longer a pretty boy, Leon
cleans up his act with a truly touching and moving performance as an innocent
and naive mainlander who comes down to Hong Kong looking for a future only to
find that it existed in a woman he loves but can never have.
Lijun (Leon Lai) is a newly-immigrated Mainlander who comes
to Hong Kong in 1986 to make money for his family back in Wusih. Lost at first,
he comes to befriend local girl Chiao (Maggie Cheung), a fervent moneymaker who
shuns friends to make money. She hooks Lilun up with an English class (for a
small finder's fee) to better his chances of landing a job. Despite her initial
reservations, the two become friends as Chiao uses Lijun as an employee for her
money-making projects. As fate would have it, the two become best friends and
casual lovers, which is a problem since Lijun has a fiancée back in Wusi.
The two vow to stay only friends, which seems easy as their
lives prosper. However, when financial slowdown sets in, things take a turn for
the worse. Chiao turns to working in a massage parlor for cash, and comes to
question her "friendship" with Lijun. Eventually the two part.
Xiao-Jun brings his fiancee, Xiao-Ting (newcomer Kristy Yeung), to Hong Kong,
and Chiao eventually takes up with local triad boss Pao (Eric Tsang). However,
despite their best efforts, their fates cross again and the two find themselves
questioning their earlier choices.
Peter Chan brings the same respectful touch to this film that
he does his others, but he holds back from the sentimentality of Age of
Miracles or the lurid exposition of Who's the Woman, Who's the Man. Comrades, Almost a Love Story is a
UFO production, but it's also the most restrained UFO production ever. Instead
of getting the pithy platitudes or existential musings that UFO is famed for,
we get a fleshed-out, complete story about two people who struggle not to fall
in love. In fact, the film's exposition
doesn't play like exposition. It arises from the struggles and characters and
not from the pen of an ambitious screenwriter. Ivy Ho's script is rich with
wonderful details that draw upon the culture and the history of recent Hong
Kong.
