Comrades, Almost a Love Story by Peter Chan Ho-Sun (1996)
5 January 2008I originally saw this at the now defunct Garfield theater in San Gabriel in a double feature with the amazing 8 1/2 send up Viva Erotica. This is one of my top 10 movies, and certainly one of my favorite love stories, and it doesn’t hurt that it features my favorite actress, the lovely Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk. And not only that, but I also think this is the role that Lai Ming was born to play. And of course Eric Tsang is always great. This is an amazing movie, and really is almost a love story. These 2 should be together, but things just don’t quite work out for them, but can they? Really a lovely film, but it deserves a special edition with a good transfer, because the DVD I have seems to be the same transfer as the laserdisc I also own. And I just love that my favorite Cinematographer Christopher Doyle plays the English Teacher in this film.
Li Xiao-Jun (Leon Lai Ming) is a Mainlander who immigrates to Hong Kong from his hometown of Wusih in 1986. He has a girlfriend backhome named Xiao-Ting (Kristy Yeung Kung-Yu) who he constantly writes to. He makes a trip to McDonalds as he has never been and meets a local girl named Chiao (Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk) who sidelines in selling English classes to Mainlanders. The two seem like unlikely friends, but slowly as she starts to using him in her money making schemes the two get closer and closer. After one scheme to sell the music of Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng fails, the two end up as casual lovers, which is complicated because Xiao-jun is supposed to marry Xiao-ting. Eventually as the economy sours, Xiao-jun is doing better as he has started working as a chef, while Chiao is doing pretty badly, and has to start working at a massage parlor for cash. Things get really awkward when Xiao-jun buys the same gold bracelet for both girls, and Chiao breaks it off with him, because she obviously has more feelings for him, and starts seeing a gangster named Pao (Eric Tsang Chi Wai).
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
Time passes and Xiao-jun brings Xiao-ting down, and they get married, and invite Chiao and Pao to the wedding, and things get awkward as Xiao-ting and Chiao become friends, and Xiao-jun obviously still loves Chiao as he grows distant from his new wife. Eventually Chiao and Xiao-jun start their relationship again, and want to be together, as they always should have been. Chiao first wants to say goodbye to Pao, but she finds her apartment ransacked by police, and Pao is leaving on a boat, and Chiao just can’t leave him, and goes with him. LEaving Xiao-jun alone, and he does the honorable thing and leaves Xiao-ting, ruining her life, as he never should have married her.
Eventually Xiao-jun moves with his chef friend to New York, working as a chef, not knowing that Chiao is there too. She is with Pao, but Pao gets killed by some street punks, and she is going to be deported, but she runs. Eventually she gets her green card, and plans on returning home for the first time in many years. She is watching a television with a news report that Teressa Teng has died, and as she is watching it, miraculously Xiao-jun walks up, and they finally see watch other, after missing each other for so many years.
We then cut back to the opening with Xiao-jun arriving in Hong Kong, and we see that the woman who arrived at the same time was Chiao, as she was in fact from Guangdong, and a mainlander too, she just spoke Cantonese right from the start.
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Sure this film is glossy, and almost Hollywood like, but this is an amazing film, and as I said one of my top films. I can only hope this film gets a nice upgrade. Hell I would love to see it on BlueRay! This is a top notch film and a must see!