Hong Kong director Yim Ho delivers a tender story about youth seeking identity, while looking at others. With great subtlety, Yim explores a new generation of Chinese confronting old questions of love, marriage, and faithfulness, and modern concerns such as abortion and environmental damage. Yim Ho is one of the leading directors responsible for Hong Kong’s new wave movement in the early 1980s, which was begun by a group of directors with overseas television experience. This group is more concerned with the realist form and social issues, rather than any commercialism. And both these attributes are in evidence here, as is Yim’s obvious rapport with actors. Although not one of his best works, A West Lake Moment, set in Hangzhou’s gorgeous West Lake (two hours from Shanghai), offers a fresh take on the love genre which of late has fallen on trite times.

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
July 2005 issue