1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 76: Comrades: Almost a love story
Compare this Hong Kong rom-com to Nora Ephron’s crowd-pleasers (When Harry Met Sally; Sleepless in Seattle; You’ve Got Mail).
Similarities:
The woman, even more driven, holds an endless succession of jobs (hustles, really), several at a time:
The lovers pursue and retreat from each other, stringing the audience along. There are good arguments for their coming together, and for their remaining apart. What will the lovers choose? Or will fate choose for them?
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
They become friends because they’re lonely. Both have moved to Hong Kong from the mainland. One of them knows that the other is an immigrant; the other does not. The truth is revealed only gradually.
It won’t be these characters’ last move. The story takes them from China to Hong Kong to New York: least free, freer, freest.
Hong Kong, it seems, is the intermediate stage in a “natural” progression from China to the United States, whether or not the mainlanders who stop over in Hong Kong admit it. Their behavior in Hong Kong points to it. They take English classes. They eat U.S. food and watch U.S. movies. Mickey Mouse is a recurring image. One older Chinese immigrant, who has spent her life running a brothel of Thai immigrants, is obsessed with the actor William Holden.
On the other hand, the immigrants regard the mainland as shameful. They hush up their origins. If they cling to certain relics of the past, they keep them secret.
A pop star, Teresa Teng, dominates the soundtrack. Mainlanders in Hong Kong revere but won’t openly listen to her, lest they be detected as not native to Hong Kong.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The character who bucks the trend is Pau, a good-natured gangster played by Eric Tsang (who reminds one of Peter Lorre).
The woman involves herself with Pau during a difficult time. Pau isn’t stupid. He notices the lovers’ feelings for each other. Ruthless in business dealings, he’s surprisingly tolerant of his “kept” woman’s longings. Perhaps he can afford to put up with her equivocal feelings because, paradoxically, he isn’t a striver. He may pursue money, but he’s outside the usual hierarchy of advancement. He’ll always be riffraff; he knows what he is; he is contented.
He, too, moves to New York, and observes wryly that the rough-and-tumble neighborhood where he has ended up isn’t very different from where he began.
Meanwhile, the lovers are kept at arm’s length from each other by their mainstream notions of success.
This is my favorite image: Cheung on the left, Tsang on the right, Lai and his mainland bride in the middle. Four characters, three couples. The dream, on both continents, is for romantic and material success to issue predictably from hard work and prudent choice. But success is more capricious. The route is tortuous and unclear; at some junctures, travelers must be downright lucky.
Similarities:
- The lovers “meet cute”
- It takes years for them to end up together
- They’re played by big stars
- Maggie Cheung (compare: Meg Ryan)
- Leon Lai (compare: “rom-com” Tom Hanks, with a little of Forrest Gump stirred in)
- The lovers are poor immigrants
- They don’t live in apartments that only millionaires could afford
- They don’t have respectable upper-middle-class jobs (a sample of Ephron-movie jobs: architect, journalist, CEO)
The woman, even more driven, holds an endless succession of jobs (hustles, really), several at a time:
- McDonald’s cashiering
- For-profit language school recruiting
- Stock trading
- Bootleg music vending
- Tour guiding
- Massaging
- Being “kept” by a gangster
The lovers pursue and retreat from each other, stringing the audience along. There are good arguments for their coming together, and for their remaining apart. What will the lovers choose? Or will fate choose for them?
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
They become friends because they’re lonely. Both have moved to Hong Kong from the mainland. One of them knows that the other is an immigrant; the other does not. The truth is revealed only gradually.
It won’t be these characters’ last move. The story takes them from China to Hong Kong to New York: least free, freer, freest.
Hong Kong, it seems, is the intermediate stage in a “natural” progression from China to the United States, whether or not the mainlanders who stop over in Hong Kong admit it. Their behavior in Hong Kong points to it. They take English classes. They eat U.S. food and watch U.S. movies. Mickey Mouse is a recurring image. One older Chinese immigrant, who has spent her life running a brothel of Thai immigrants, is obsessed with the actor William Holden.
On the other hand, the immigrants regard the mainland as shameful. They hush up their origins. If they cling to certain relics of the past, they keep them secret.
A pop star, Teresa Teng, dominates the soundtrack. Mainlanders in Hong Kong revere but won’t openly listen to her, lest they be detected as not native to Hong Kong.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The character who bucks the trend is Pau, a good-natured gangster played by Eric Tsang (who reminds one of Peter Lorre).
The woman involves herself with Pau during a difficult time. Pau isn’t stupid. He notices the lovers’ feelings for each other. Ruthless in business dealings, he’s surprisingly tolerant of his “kept” woman’s longings. Perhaps he can afford to put up with her equivocal feelings because, paradoxically, he isn’t a striver. He may pursue money, but he’s outside the usual hierarchy of advancement. He’ll always be riffraff; he knows what he is; he is contented.
He, too, moves to New York, and observes wryly that the rough-and-tumble neighborhood where he has ended up isn’t very different from where he began.
Meanwhile, the lovers are kept at arm’s length from each other by their mainstream notions of success.
This is my favorite image: Cheung on the left, Tsang on the right, Lai and his mainland bride in the middle. Four characters, three couples. The dream, on both continents, is for romantic and material success to issue predictably from hard work and prudent choice. But success is more capricious. The route is tortuous and unclear; at some junctures, travelers must be downright lucky.
