Nam yi nui

This is a story of the illegal immigrant experience of people from the mainland of China who have made it to Hong Kong for a better life. The first thing you'll notice in this Shaw Brothers film is that the city of Hong Kong is a co-star. You see the poverty stricken parts, the glamour parts. Cherie Chung plays Sun, who arrives in Hong Kong to escape. Once there she meets with a carpenter, whom she marries ostensibly so he can take care of her and become pregnant so he can have a son. However, he is middle aged and she is much more drawn to an aspiring boxer who is young like her. There is tension in this film regarding this and it is played well. Cherie Chung does very well, she had matured as an actress by then and did not need to rely solely on her beauty. She is completely believable. This is an erotically charged drama which, while not a happy film because its all about keeping yourself under the radar to avoid being deported, is good because it flows well and the characters have that sense of longing for love and redemption etched onto their faces. Not the easiest film to watch because of its sometime grim nature, but a welcome respite from the slapstick comedies that Hong Kong routinely churned out at the time.