Storm Clouds Over Hong Kong?

Significantly, the two newest films in the UCLA Film Archives’ “Hong Kong in Transition”--four features screening tonight and Wednesday at 8 p.m. in Melnitz Theater--deal with people leaving the British Crown Colony.

Allen Fong’s charming and wistful “Just Like Weather” (1986), which is punctuated by a series of flash-forwards in the United States, centers on a very young couple whose relationship is becoming strained in their struggle to survive in overcrowded Hong Kong. She has a steady job and parents in Hong Kong; he moves from one odd job to the next and has a mother in New York. By the time he’s persuaded her at least to see what America is like, Fong has painted a very warm and real portrait of a couple growing up. “Just Like Weather” screens tonight, followed by Fong’s semi-autobiographical “Fathers and Sons.”

Yim Ho’s “The Homecoming” (1984), an auspicious debut feature, finds Coral (Josephine Koo), a striking Hong Kong woman in her 30s, returning to her ancestral village in China, ostensibly to visit her grandmother’s grave but actually to distance herself from bitter personal and professional defeats.

The heart of this lyrical, understated film is Coral’s reunion with her childhood friend Pearl (Siqin Gaowa), now the local principal. Through these two very different women we perceive two distinct cultures, yet in drawing these contrasts “The Homecoming” suggests how Hong Kong and China might accommodate each other in the near future.