The star-packed Trivial Matters is a collection of seven very loosely connected short films, which were based on a series of stories writer/director Edmond Pang penned about love and fate in modern Hong Kong.

Some of the shorts work well, such as one that pairs Twins's Gillian Chung opposite Cookies's Stephy Tang as mates in the same school who deal with pregnancy differently. This sequence has a whole lot of real emotion that you might not expect from something starring two bubblegum pop stars, and would actually probably make a fine full-length picture.

On the other hand, we have stuff like the story where Edison Chen tries to impress a lady by telling her he "cleans" up stains in public toilets by urinating on them. Perhaps it's fitting poetic justice that Chen's last Hong Kong film role has him saying the phrase "shit stains" about twenty times.

As a whole, the changes in tone between the stories, as well as a lack of closure to most of them, make Trivial Matters a bit of rough going. There is some good to be found here, but you'll unfortunately have to sit through a good deal of crud to get to it.

Ultimately, Trivial Matters comes off as a nice experiment that still fails to get the desired results. It was good to see a Hong Kong studio willing to put out something other than the usual crime drama or weepy romantic drivel.

But all that is for naught if the viewer doesn't become engaged. Maybe it's because I don't live in Hong Kong, but there was a whole lot presented here that didn't really connect, and as such, I can only offer a mild recommendation for this.

[review from www.hkfilm.net]