‘Comrades’ Tells Timeless Tale of Romance

Peter Chan’s captivating “Comrades: Almost a Love Story” is an epic romance with just enough echoes of the original “Love Affair” to remind us yet again that nowadays a number of foreign filmmakers are more adept at making the classic Hollywood heart-tugger than most contemporary American writers and directors.

Best known for the sparkling gender-bending comedy “He’s a Woman, She’s a Man,” Chan knows how to draw you into Ivy Ho’s exceedingly shrewd script and how to present star actors at their charismatic best.

Indeed, “Comrades: Almost a Love Story,” which launches the “New Chinese Cinema” series at the Grande 4-Plex, represents a career peak for Maggie Cheung, a young actress of such talent and versatility that she’s equally at ease in action and martial arts fantasy or portraying the ill-fated ‘30s Shanghai movie star Ruan Ling-yu, one of the greatest actresses ever to face a camera. “Comrades” offers Cheung the kind of role actresses rightly adore, calling for a wide range of emotions yet allowing for plenty of glamour.

Cheung is a formidably expressive actress, and Chan misses no opportunity for her to glow. She’s well-matched by tall, clean-cut pop singer-turned-actor Leon Lai, who matures from naivete to self-knowledge without losing a fundamental innocence. (“Comrades” won nine prizes in last year’s Hong Kong Film Awards, including best picture, best director, best screenplay, best actress and best supporting actor.)

Spanning the decade between 1986 and 1996, “Comrades” finds Cheung’s Qiao and Lai’s Jun meeting at a Hong Kong McDonald’s where Qiao works. Jun has arrived from Tientsin with the promise of shelter from an aunt--and speaking only Mandarin. By contrast, Qiao is from the south, Guangzhou, “where we get Hong Kong TV,” but luckily for him she’s as fluent in Mandarin as she is in her native Cantonese.

Jun just wants any job and dreams of marrying his girl back home, but Qiao seethes with ambition and determination to achieve financial success. Her stamina and her resourcefulness are awesome, but underneath a toughened veneer she’s able to take pity on Jun and try to help him get started.

Jun and Qiao work such incredibly long hours at a variety of menial jobs they really have no friends other than each other. Young and attractive, they end up in bed together. But Qiao is the kind of woman who reacts to moments of vulnerability by hardening herself. She rebuffs the sweet-natured Jun, convinced that they are such fundamentally different people that he could only hold her back.

At this point “Comrades” starts leapfrogging over the decade, picking up Qiao and Jun’s chance encounters. Jun actually does well enough in the business world to bring his fiancee to Hong Kong and to marry her while Qiao opens a florist shop and then a bridal gown shop as well. She’s hooked up with a wise, kindly gangster (Eric Tsang), an older, caring man without illusions. Gradually, however, Qiao and then Jun himself realize how deeply they are in love with each other--and how they’ve messed up their lives by disregarding their true feelings.

Moving on to Taiwan and then to New York “Comrades” follows the ups and downs of their lives and starts building with great skill--and necessary shamelessness--incredible suspense over whether the two will ever cross paths again, whether they will ever have their chance at happiness. “Comrades” has you rooting for them the way fans root for home teams.

Of course, “Comrades” is drenchingly romantic, but Chan has also mastered the old trick of spinning an emotionally extravagant tale with a well-defined hero and heroine and turned them loose in a sharply observed, rapidly changing real world. Spectacularly photographed by Jingle Ma and accompanied by an unapologetically potent hearts-and-flowers score by Chiu Tsang-Hei, “Comrades” has scope, depth and most important, the wisdom and courage to wear its heart on its sleeve.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: It includes some language, some love-making.

‘Comrades: A Love Story’

Maggie Cheung: Qiao

Leon Lai: Jun

Eric Tsang: Pao

A Rim Film release of a Golden Harvest Entertainment presentation of a UFO (United Filmmakers Organization) production. Producer-director Peter Chan. Executive producer Raymond Chow. Screenplay by Ivy Ho. Cinematographer Jingle Ma. Editors Chan Ki-Hop, Kwong Chi-Leung. Costumes Dora Ng. Music Chiu Tsang-Hei. Art director Yee Chung-Man. In Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes.

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* Exclusively at the Grande 4-Plex through Thursday, 345 S. Figueroa St., downtown Los Angeles, (213) 617-0268.