LOVE IN THE BUFF (Pang Ho Cheung). 111 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (March 30). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNNN
Hot on the heels of his 2010 Hong Kong-set romantic comedy Love In A Puff, Pang Ho Cheung’s sequel, Love In The Buff, is another very funny and poignant look at love. Call it Sex And Two Cities.
Hong Kong ad exec Jimmy (Shawn Yue) and his slightly older lover, Cherie (Miriam Yeung), who works for a cosmetics company, are at an impasse in their relationship. He’s basically a boy who won’t grow up, and she doesn’t want to nag. When he’s transferred to Beijing, there’s no talk of her moving with him, but as fate would have it, she too gets stationed there. Soon, although both have new partners – a squeaky-voiced young flight attendant for him, a serene and mature engineer for her – the two begin flirting, texting and carrying on an affair.
Pang and his co-writer, Heiward Mak, offer up lots of funny sequences for the two stars, who are surrounded by great comic talents as their friends and a handful of cameos by Hong Kong celebrities. The novel settings range from a matchmaking park where mothers try to pawn off their single sons, to a restaurant washroom where Cherie has an unfortunate accident with her iPhone.
There’s a whiff of Pacific Rim lifestyle porn to the flick, but the actors are superb, especially Leung, whose wounded Cherie expertly uses brittle repartee to hide her true feelings.
