Needing You

The movie is deeply HK and HK cinema at heart - with its inside jokes which will enthrall fans familiar with the romantic comedies rife in the 80's. To also takes swipes at popular icons in contemporary HK and Chinese life. Kinki loses her love amulet in a crowded eatery - which by her muddled verbal outcries resembles a contraceptive in description - a subject arousing both embarrassment and interest in a society obsessed with titillation and sexual mores. She proceeds on hands and knees to see if it is stuck to the moulded rubber Prada soles of the diners - again a current fascination with HK denizens. References to the Chinese culinary infatuation with innards, pre-Viagra aphrodisiacs - noodles featuring potent bull penis - and exotic game abound. In a hilarious scene where Andy plays Cyrano De Bergerac to Kinki, out to seduce her two-timing boyfriend, she makes him wait in a most dreaded restaurant - an Indian one - where cleverly angled shots emphasise his (and general Chinese) alienation and racist phobia. An added love interest in the form of Roger a young American Chinese internet tycoon plays out HK's pre-tech-stock-crash love affair with dotcoms - Kinki ignorantly (or perhaps wisely) jibing That's a bubble economy. You won't make any money....... those websites are about the same. Kinki's parents over-the-top reaction to her breakup entertainingly highlights the nagging obsession of Chinese parents with the single status of their unwed daughters.