First: the good news. Sylvia Chang stars in a movie, after a long long wait (two years ago for Tempting Heart). And it's a pleasure to report that Chang is as luminous as can be expected. She's also preserves a certain integrity and elegance, while making the scenes she appears in as believable and moving as possible.







However, it's too much to ask, of any one actor, to rescue this sodden, sentimental, disappointment. Well intentioned, for sure. But Raymond To, directing his own script, based on a novel describing real events, is at a loss how to handle the material. It's important, serious material, that too seldom appears in any non-exploited way in a Hong Kong film: Chang plays the mother of a hemophiliac who contracts HIV, then AIDS. Josie Ho supplies a creditable performance as an HIV sufferer who seeks out Chang for advice.



But any attempt at sympathetic realism is vitiated by To's saccharine, sentimentalized approach, and awkward handling of narrative, overlayed with a such a mawkishly overblown layer of Christian piety that it turns images of faith into pure kitsch. Poor Sylvia: she does her best.