THE PRIVATE EYE BLUES was directed by Eddie Fong Ling-Ching, and stars Jacky Cheung Hok-Yu (CHINESE GHOST STORY II & III, BULLET IN THE HEAD) as a Hong Kong private detective depressed over the failure of his marriage to ambitious television reporter Kathy Chow Hoi-Mei. When he is assigned to keep tabs on a young Mainland girl (Mavis Fan Hiu-Huen), she turns the tables on him by blowing his cover and declaring that the two of them are predestined.
THE PRIVATE EYE BLUES belongs to that subgenre of HK flicks that deal with the anxiety of Hong Kong's (then) looming reunification with mainland China. The film gets a lot of mileage out of cultural and language differences. We come to share Cheung's unease with visitors from the Mainland, and empathize with Mavis Fan's reluctance to be returned there.
Although this film's off kilter shooting style is initially a bit difficult to follow, its core benefits from amusing and offbeat characters and the latticework of circumstance that unites them all. THE PRIVATE EYE BLUES is loose and elastic without being too self-consciously arty; although many hardcore Asian film fans were not impressed, others may be pleasantly reminded of similarly themed films such as Jonathan Demme's SOMETHING WILD (1985) and Wong Kar-Wai's CHUNGKING EXPRESS (also 1994).
