Ping Pong

At last a Chinatown movie, distinguished by its lively pace and quirky humour, that's about Gerrard Street, not San Francisco: the British-born director has made a dozen or more features in Hong Kong, but this is his first on home ground. It's about Elaine Choi (Sheen, excellent), a junior clerk in a law office, who is plucked from the typing pool to execute a Chinese will she can't even read. But there are strings attached to restaurateur Sam Wong's bequests that the beneficiaries cannot accept; and Elaine finds herself at the centre of a mystery thriller - or is it a farce? Finally, inspired by the legend of the Woman Warrior, she begins to discover reserves of inner strength she never knew she had. Aside from the ever-reliable David Yip, most of the faces are unfamiliar. Not in the least inscrutable, though: these are engaging characters whose confusions and doubts testify to the problems of being foreigners in a strange (but largely benign) land.