All about love

Any movie directed by Ann Hui is worth watching; those set in Hong Kong are cinematic albums of city memorabilia. In her latest (2010), All About Love, SoHo's restaurants and nearby Central-MidLevels escalator system and market lanes provide the richly colourful setting for an unusual mainstream movie experience: an examination of lesbian lives and loves.

Its blend of romantic comedy, socio-political commentary and pop psychology (written by Yee-shan Yang) only works some of the time while telling the tales of two schoolgirl friends who had an adult affair, split up, and meet again by chance when they've both become unintentionally pregnant.

Banking executive Anita (Vivian Chow) met young Mike (William Chan) through the Internet for a one-night fling, and the actress's dead-pan eyes help the audience to believe that her character hadn't realised he was a virginal quick-firing 19-year-old student who'd forgotten to put on his spare condom.

Her quick-tongued high-spirited ex-lover, Macy (Sandra Ng, of course), is a lawyer representing her office neighbour Robert (Eddie Cheung) in his divorce. After a few dinners and heart-to-hearts, she ends up teaching him how to give his wife orgasms, which leads to her accidental pregnancy. The two women attend a pre-natal clinic, and get re-acquainted in a cute up-and-down trip to their different flats beside the escalator on Hong Kong Island.

The "bi" women's characters, and nervousness about each other's commitments to each other and their pregnancies, are sketched charmingly, and the two men trapped in their predicament are well played and remarkably credible and likable comic fantasies. They're joined by a more intense married couple of lesbian friends who may adopt Macy's baby.

On the fringe of this sextet of very modern Hongkongers, a circle of dedicated feminist lesbian activists provide an occasional chorus of socio-political comments. Maybe they're intended to elaborate the women's difficulties, or add a wider perspective to the tale of middle-class angsts. But, when the political angle overwhelms the story, as with an emblematic street protest against her bank's harassment of Anita, the movie's credibility is diminished, and the ending is too pat to be true even for a rom-com fantasy.