Baat seng bou hei

One of Chow Yun-fat's most successful comedies of the 1980s, a fundamentally conventional romp about three bachelor brothers (a cartoonist, a TV cooking instructor, and an aspiring actor) who stumble into romance. But it's spiced up by an unusually rich mix of indigenous Cantonese flavors. The careers of several characters link them to the Chinese opera stage, and the characterizations are stylized in an intentionally "operatic" way. Chow plays a man who pretends to be gay in order to ingratiate himself with women; and his flamboyant camping - complete with limp wrists and Black Lagoon mud packs - is only a little more flamboyant than the other key performances. In the finale, the entire cast appears in traditional makeup and performs a scene from the classic Cantonese opera The Purple Hairpin, with the lyrics satirically altered. The ethnic seasoning here may finally be too exotic for Western tastes: in fact, most of the mile-a-minute wordplay is inaccessible even to speakers of other Chinese dialects. (A few key puns are translated in the helpful subtitles, including a running gag conflating the Cantonese words for "love bite" and "chicken curry.") But the fun of watching Chow Yun-fat strut, squeal, and preen his way through an entire movie transcends cultural barriers. No film performer on earth seems to have more fun earning his living, and the pleasure is infectious. - David Chute