Hold You Tight

Kwan’s most liberated and open-hearted film so far is about people who swing between fidelity and infidelity, marriage and divorce, motherhood and childlessness, true friendship and casual sex.

Stanley Kwan’s first feature since he came out as a gay in his documentary Yang+Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema is a piercing account of relationships in a time of uncertainty – the time being 1997, the year Hong Kong returned to China’s sovereignity. Ah Moon (formerly sexpot Chingmy Yau) is a businesswoman who dies in a plane crash en route to Taipei; her computer-nerd husband Fung Wau, more numbed than grief-stricken, stumbles into a non-sexual relationship with the gay estate agent who offers to help him sell his apartment. Rosa (also played by Chingmy Yau) is another Hong Kong businesswoman, a few years older and wiser than Ah Moon; she has left her husband and moved to Taipei to open a boutique. The film’s plots turn on the fact that both women meet Jie, a young drifter from Taiwan who is briefly Ah Moon’s lover but just might be secretly interested in her husband…Through characters who oscillate between commitment and infidelity, marriage and divorce, maternity and childlessness, true friendship and casual sex, Kwan offers a very personal reflection on emotional insecurities. Superbly shot by Kwan Poon-Leung, this is Kwan’s most free-spirited and open-hearted film to date. In fact, probably his only mistake was asking an English critic to appear in a cameo role – says Tony Rayns. –Rotterdam