| A surprisingly good romantic movie in which Jennifer (Cherie Chung), idealistically and adoringly, immigrates from HK to New York to study acting and be closer to her boyfriend, Vincent (Danny Wong). Prior to her departure, Jennifer’s family makes arrangements with a very distant relative of the family, Boat Head (Chow Yun-Fat, before being all John Woo'ed out), to help her settle in New York. Hearing that he “owns a house and a car, lives like a king,“ and is a “community leader in Chinatown,” she is clearly disappointed when it turns out he’s a crass, sloppily dressed, ready-to-rumble man driving a dilapidated car and living in the slums (and has arranged for her to live in the apartment above his!).
Determined to make the best of her situation, Jennifer moves forward and, soon after arriving, decides to surprise Vincent at the train station, only to find him traveling with another woman. At first, it’s hard to tell if Jennifer is just immature and unable to deal with the fact that her boyfriend can have a female friend (which he insists is the case when Jennifer confronts him), or if he really is cheating on her. Regardless of that, however, the focus of the story is on Jennifer trying to find herself and her way in New York while facing adversity, after expecting everything to work out perfectly. And after awhile, it doesn’t seem so important to know exactly what Vincent has been up to, really, because knowing wouldn’t have changed how Jennifer dealt with her feelings.
Although very typical of the numerous odd couple movies out there—she learns to live undefined simply by her relationship with Vincent! He learns how to behave and dress properly!—this is one of the more believable ones as, despite their personality and lifestyle differences, they get along simply because they like one another and neither asks the other to change who he/she is. And in being able to just be, each of them wants to please the other by changing for the better (“better” being subjective, of course), but never because he/she is asked to change. Which is all super romantic, if you ask me, which you didn’t, but it doesn’t matter because I am HKFlix staff and you're already at the end of my review. Booyakasha! |