The last film to win the Best Picture prize at the Hong Kong Film Awards before Hong Kong ceased to be a British colony is a quietly comic, bittersweet love story about two people adrift in the sea of life, trying to find a home for themselves, and hopefully, just maybe, each other.

Spanning a course of ten years, the film opens with Li Xiaojun (HK pop idol extraordinare Leon Lai) coming to Hong Kong; fresh off the train, he's a country hick who's got small-time dreams of setting up home for his childhood sweetheart and himself in this bustling and exciting city, where a trip to a McDonald's warrants a whole letter in and of itself to the family back home. At this bastion of international capitalism, Xiaojun meets Li Qiao (the actress one reviewer calls an "international treasure" - and I agree - Maggie Cheung), a tough-talking capitalist intent on making her fortune by working a variety of odd-jobs as she saves up to strike it rich on the stock market. At first resistant of the country bumpkin, Qiao eventually grows fond of Xiaojun's simplicity and dedicated friendship. The two become fast friends, and because both are lonely migrants in a city of shifting fortunes, itself fast running out of time, their isolation leads them to find solace in each other's lives and bodies. Not that they dare admit to love. For Xiaojun, there's the sweetheart he's been dreaming to marry; for Qiao, there're the millions she has yet to make. And over the course of ten years, as a maudlin (then gradually, moving) pastiche of Teresa Teng songs plays over the soundtrack, the two comrades hurt and comfort each other through a tumultuous decade of change which eventually brings them to the streets of New York City, yet another stop on their road through life - except this time, they just might make the onward journey together….

Director Peter Chan has turned what could have been a soppy and silly romantic comedy into an often poignant and genuinely moving film about two people who say too little, and too much, but who never actually dare to confront their feelings for each other until it is almost too late. Behind this love story, Chan ambitiously takes on social and political commentary on the plight of immigrants everywhere in the world, and the rootlessness and normlessness they all feel away from home and loved ones. Amazingly, in spite of the tried-and-proven formula, the film works. Scripting is deft and surprisingly subdued, with many memorable moments beautifully played by the cast.

And what a cast it is. Long time Wong Kar-Wai cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, hams it up as a "gweilo" in Hong Kong, yet another passenger on the vehicle of dreams that the country once represented for rural Chinese from the mainland, and his story, though small in the scheme of the script, is an effective look at some of the shattered dreams of non-Chinese migrants when 1997 came and went. The ever-present Eric Tsang somehow tones down his usual high irritant factor to portray a kind hearted mob boss who lends Qiao many a hand on her bumpy road to success; this is possibly the best performance of his I have ever seen, and it is a surprise to find out that he is capable of more than furious mugging before the camera. In the male lead, Leon Lai shines as the somewhat dim-witted hero with a heart of gold. To his credit, Lai makes such an unbelievably sensitive and nice man endearing instead of nausea inducing. This is the first role he's truly inhabited, and he also displays a flair for subtle comedy not previously apparent; it's nice to know that when he's not too worried about his pop idol image, Lai is actually capable of a real performance. However, the film truly does belong to Maggie Cheung. Now a hot commodity in Europe based on the success of Oliver Assayas' "Irma Vep", and soon to make her American movie debut in Wayne Wang's "Chinese Box" opposite Jeremy Irons and Gong Li, Cheung adds yet another feather to her cap with this turn as the externally harsh, internally gentle Li Qiao. Subtlety was never one of Cheung's greatest assets as an actress when she first began her career in such mindless fare as "Chasing Girls" and "Monica" - indeed, back then, she was arguably the Joey Wong of her day: stilted beyond belief in her line delivery and nothing more than a vacuous pretty face onscreen. Over the years, she somehow learned to act, and in the late 1980s/early 1990s, her skills became her calling card as she won one award after another for her roles in such prestige pieces as Chan Friend's "A Fishy Story", Yim Ho's "Red Dust", Ann Hui's "Song of the Exile", Clara Law's "Farewell China", and most notably, her multiple award winning roles in a pair of Stanley Kwan movies, "Full Moon in New York" and "Centrestage", the last of which earned her the Berlin Silver Bear, making her the first Asian actress to ever win the award. Through sheer hard work, one imagines, Cheung now calls upon subtlety with such astonishing ease that her entire performance in this film never feels like a performance at all. With her expressive face and magnetic screen personality, Cheung's work here recalls her fantastic cameo in "Ashes of Time", and is a true joy to behold even as you soak in the rest of the film's many delights.

By and large, this is a film that tries its best to avoid all the irksome, cloying cliches and pratfalls of a typical romantic comedy. Happily for its audience, this truly is just "almost" a love story.

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