Little Cheung

There are three Cheungs in Chan's complex and inventive film: the dying Cantonese opera star Tang Wing-Cheung (to whom the film is dedicated), the original Kid Cheung (child star Bruce Lee in a '50s movie) and the film's nine-year-old protagonist, who helps out in his family's restaurant in the working class district of Mongkok, surrounded by hookers, gangsters, coffin makers and illegal immigrants from China. Framed as an investigation into the community's economic structures and dynamics, the film (set in 1996, on the eve of the handover) uses a non-pro cast and a free form plot to assert what's specific and distinctive about HK's culture - albeit defined across Chan's now-familiar scatological obsessions. With a Kieslowskian flourish the protagonists of Made in Hong Kong and The Longest Summer turn up in the closing moments, making this the third part of an informal 'handover trilogy'.