Your Place or Mine! (1998)
Reviewed by: Mark on 1999-12-30
Summary: Charming little romantic comedy
This is a charming little romantic comedy directed and written by James Yuen. Wai (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and Patrick (Alex Fong) are partners at the BEST advertising agency, where they use "Love" to flog anything from diapers to insurance. Outside of work, their experience of love is poles apart. Patrick has a steady girlfriend Fanny (Eileen Tung) and 108 lies to cover his chronic habit of illicit one-night stands, whereas Wai's lonely flat is cluttered with the leftover possessions of the string of girls who've dumped him. Actually, it's not that lonely, as Patrick is often upstairs with some new girl using the place as a sex motel, Wai's widowed father Simon (Spencer Lam) is often downstairs whooping it up over the soccer, and the string of girls occasionally drop by for a kooky dream sequence in which they admonish Wai for "not understanding women". However, he's ready to broaden that understanding, and soon falls in love with two of them at the same time: his cute new protege and part-time fishball hawker Ah Yu (Vivian Hsu), and his cool new boss and alleged lesbian Vivian (Ada Choi). Meanwhile, Patrick is having some heart-to-hearts (and on one occasion, hands-to-heart) with his co-worker Mei (Suki Kwan), which soon enough puts him on the perilous path to Lie #109.

As you can tell, the film contrasts male approaches to relationships. Patrick (a self-avowed "natural born satyr") treats any moment of intimacy as a possible tongue kiss situation, whereas the best that nice guy Wai can do with a drunk and apparently compliant partner is to count her toes. You can see the word "comeuppance" looming over Patrick's head like a Viagra prescription.

The film is punctuated by plenty of quick gags and cute camera tricks, and these along with great performances from some of the most handsome and/or beautiful actors in Hong Kong make it a pleasure to watch from go to woe. Although the film presents it as a natural law that men like to fool around, the final caution is that if you don't know when to stop fooling and get serious, the ultimate answer to "Your place or mine?" could be "None of the above".

[As a sidenote, the poster for this film features Tony in bed with all of the women, while Alex consoles himself with a girly mag in the bottom righthand corner, i.e. the exact reverse of the actual plot. A tactic to cash in on Tony's star power, or an attempt to repackage him as a raging 100% hetero after he was last seen cuddling Leslie Cheung in Happy Together? You be the judge!]