Nui yan boon sik

A movie to celebrate 10 years since the handover of Hong Kong, this film aims to document the difficulties Hong Kong faced immediately, from the Asian financial crisis in the late 90s to SARS.

Gigi Leung plays Joy, a powerful CFO of a hotel chain in Hong Kong, who sees her husband CEO replaced by a young mainland Chinese businessman. As the Asian financial crisis hits, relationships are strained and even the most trusted ones, both personal and business, are troubled.

Meanwhile, Fiona Sit plays the naïve assistant of Joy, falls for a cheat, yet has an admirer in the form of the flower shop boy next door.

In all honesty, the film fell into the typical trap in converting a novel into a motion picture. There are too many minor dramatic scenes that might work in describing real life in a novel, but simply doesn't add anything to a film lasting an hour and a half. The relationships between the characters seem too artificial, despite glimmers of chemistry amongst some of the actors, but generally, it just didn't work.

But my greatest gripe was that this film just relied so heavily on product placement such that it turned out to be one long advertisement. I understand that films need funding, but that just ruined any artistic value this film had (not that it really had much to start with).

I'm rather disappointed overall. Gigi Leung has proved that she can be a good dramatic actress, but sadly, her talent was wasted this time.

As we pass the 10th anniversary of the political coup d'etat/long awaited return to motherland (depending on your POV), inevitably there will be numerous movies that will have something to say about what went down these last ten years. And what a ride it was! Seen through the eyes of strong-willed Joy (played by G. Leung) and her eccentric assistant Tung (played by F. Sit), it chronicles their exploits in the real estate industry, and especially the men that come and go in their lives.

Music/film veteran George Lam plays the real estate executive and husband of Joy, who struggles to find his place in society as the Anglo-American commercial-political clique is replaced with a Chinese Communist one. Kevin Cheng plays the young idealistic rookie doctor, brother-in-law of Joy. Yuan Nie plays the young, debonair, Chinese communist CEO who replaces George Lam's post because of his connections up north. Hins Cheung plays the shy, admirer of Tung who unfortunately is stuck in a job that is not terribly macho. Shiu Hung Hui plays Joy's extremely money-minded father in law. Eddy Ko plays a member of the director's board at where Joy works. Kitty Yuen plays the relentless multi-level marketer who's "friends" with everybody at Joy's place of work. Hacken Lee plays a surprise role.

First the problems: there is the mis-casting of Lam as spouse of Joy, as Lam is old enough to be her father, and Leung has no marriage experience in real life. The gap between the acting skills of the full-time actors (Kevin Cheng) and crossover pop artists (Sit) are pretty obvious. The story can get a bit moralistic at times and political bias can be alleged, but no matter, since Hollywood films are generally critical of the government too. Those acquianted with recent events of Hong Kong will easily predict what will become of the various "functional characters". Hardened, cynical types may find the story a bit sentimental at times. Some symbols of historical events, such as news footage of the stock market, may have been used too repetitively without any imagination or subtlety to the point of being hackneyed.

But overall, the cast's spirited performance (after all, they HAVE all experienced what happened the last 10 years) will make you laugh, make you cry as you recall the challenges Hong Kong has faced. This is a film you could show foreigners to help them understand really matters to citizens of "the fragrant harbor".

All I was thinking was that film could have been so much better. It spans just about ten years, from the handover of Hong Kong to almost now (2007). The story mostly revolves around 2 women, the career climbing Joy and her assistant Tung. The film chronicles the changes in Hong Kong over this time, especially in the financial end. It even includes a segment about SARS, which is almost heartbreaking. The problem is, the movie is too broad. In those ten or so years, Tung doesn't age at all (lucky her) and has one ultimately bad relationship. Joy, played by the very pretty Gigi Leung, suffers greatly in this film. The film took so long to get to where it ended up. There wasn't enough interaction between the two main characters. There is sadness, anger, suicide all through this film, so the film has an emotional center. The reason why I gave the film six stars is that the last twenty five minutes are very good. If you can get through the film up to then, its worth it. So, while I can't recommend it to everyone, its not bad. It could have, however, been tightened to be just about Joy and Tung, not about their families, business etc. Its a decent film that I wanted to like a lot more.