C'est la Vie, Ma Cherie

Grade-A weepie about a rapturous but doomed affair between a jaded jazz musician and a young woman with health problems who sings in the night market. Just as you're recovering from the shock of a Hong Kong movie made with sincerity, credible emotions, a coherent script and a truly joyous use of music, director Derek Yee delivers an emotional knockout that would make a stone weep. A triumph for independent production (no Hong Kong major wanted to touch it), it made a star of the wonderful Anita Yuen and swept the board at the 1994 HK Film Awards.