Little Cheung (Yiu Yuet-Ming) has learned that money and existence are inextricably connected to each other: “I’ve known from an early age, money is a dream. It’s a fantasy. It’s also a future.” His doting grandmother, a former Chinese opera actress, spends her afternoons gambling at a mah jong parlor. His grandmother’s affable and religious […]
A public broadcast on March 31, 1997 officially announces the disbanding of the Hong Kong Military Service Corps – the cadre of Chinese soldiers serving in the British garrison on the island – as images of regimental exercises leading to the final lowering of the sovereign flag cuts to a shot of a young boy […]
Autumn Moon (Sam Lee) describes with resigned disaffection his aimless life in the urban jungle of Hong Kong: playing street basketball with other underemployed, high school dropouts in the city park; collecting loansharking debts for a mob boss named Big Brother Wing (Chan Sang); coming to the rescue of a defenseless, mentally disabled friend named […]
In hindsight, the establishing shot of Claude Chabrol’s Bellamy showing a relaxed Paul Bellamy (Gérard Depardieu) trying to solve a crossword puzzle while on vacation at a well appointed country estate in Nîmes – an apparent compromise in destination from his wife, Françoise’s (Marie Bunel) suggestions to take a more exotic trip – serves as […]
When the attractive widow Christine (Aurore Clément) asks her children for permission to offer a statue in their garden – a gift from their late father – as a housewarming present to her new beau Gérard Courtois (Bernard Le Coq), the eldest child, Philippe (Benoît Magimel) appears visibly disconcerted by the proposal, but nevertheless acquiesces […]
François (Benoit Magimel) has returned to France after living in Chicago for the past three years to find that, despite his father Gérard’s (Bernard Le Coq) intriguing intimations, little has changed in the petit bourgeois household of the Charpin-Vasseurs. His determined stepmother Anne (Nathalie Baye) has channeled her energy towards a mayoral candidacy, against the […]