Comrades: Almost a Love Story

It's not a great film, but you get your money's worth in two hours of sudsy, tormented romance starting in 1986 with a train arriving in Hong Kong and ending in 1995 before a store window in New York. The person getting off the 1986 train is a hicky Mainland Chinese (rock star Leon Lai) seeking quick bucks in Hong Kong before returning home to his waiting sweetheart. Lost in the modern city, unable to speak English or even Cantonese (his tongue is Mandarin), the young man meets a saucy young lady (gum-chewing Maggie Cheung with a proletariat accent) toiling at McDonald's. She doesn't like to admit it, but she's from Mainland China too.

They scheme to make money together -- selling chickens, selling pornos, selling CDs of Taiwanese pop star Theresa Tang -- and they go to bed. But they decide they aren't real lovers, only "comrades." As a result, they separate for years, as she becomes involved with a squat, plump, tattoo'd gangster with a heart of gold, and he marries his nice-girl fiancée. But how they pine for each other! Lai is sweet and winning as the Chinese boy, and Irma Vep's Cheung is fabulous as always as the Chinese girl, showing a thousand expressions like a silent-movie star. At the Brattle.

-- Gerald Peary