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Chinese Box

Like Welcome to Sarajevo, and The Year of Living Dangerously, director Wayne Wang's Chinese Box focuses on a Western journalist enmeshed in the political machinery of a changing foreign landscape. In this case the Westerner is John (Jeremy Irons), who's caught up in Hong Kong's ideological identity crisis as the reins of governmental control revert to Chinese hands.

This is Wang's home turf -- he was born in Hong Kong, two years after his parents fled mainland China following the Communist takeover. Yet for the most part, Wang eschews the political soapbox. Instead he crafts the picture as a cathartic ode to a dear and passing friend.

John has long been enamored of Vivian (Gong Li), a nightclub hostess and the girlfriend of a highly prosperous businessman (Michael Hui) who won't marry her because of her tainted past. It's not until John learns he's dying of leukemia that his quest for Vivian's love becomes urgent. In gaunt, specter-like sojourns, he begins to drift through the city with a video camera, a hovering, patient observer compiling his "Pompeii tapes" to chronicle Hong Kong before "Vesuvius erupts."

Based on a story created by Wang, Paul Theroux, and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière Chinese Box hangs on the dislocation of its protagonist as he bounces among women, cultures, and classes, seeking closure in his waning hours. The first film to chronicle the handing over of Hong Kong, it's a tragic romance that flirts with but never quite makes a political statement.

-- Tom Meek