Stanley Kwan's latest movie attempts to create the same type of nostalgic mood that worked so well in Rouge and Centre Stage. While this film is as beautiful to look at as those other two masterpieces, it suffers from the absence of Anita Mui or Maggie Cheung - Sammi Cheng tries mighty hard, and she does look lovely in doing so, but she doesn't carry the film to the degree those other two actresses did, and the resulting void in screen charisma makes the deficiencies of the rather anemic plot all the more glaring.

Everlasting Regret is based on a popular novel about the life of a Shanghainese women beginning in the postwar Nationalist days through Liberation, Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, all the way to the gradual opening of the country after Mao's death. However, little of these events makes it directly onto the screen. Costume changes, set design and various props and audio cues reference the historical events happening, but the film itself focuses on the (rather mundane) emotional lives of a few characters, resulting in a slow-paced chamberpiece that lacks any real energy or conflict or compelling narrative.

Watching the film is like watching a Chinese version of a Merchant/Ivory film - it's all really beautifully filmed in a shallow nostalgic kind of way, but it doesn't amount to much. I blame Sammi for that -- she just doesn't have the screen presence that could make this material work, and in the end, I cared very little about what happened to her (or any other character).

Still, the film is visually compelling at times, with beautifully framed shots. For that alone, I'd give it a marginal recommendation.