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The movie opens with three threads, introducing the three protagonists respectively, which lead to their encounters and then follows them through their relations gradually taking shape through these encounters. Wei Ming, the relatively privileged protagonist among the three - he is given a voice-over, for instance, which suggest a place or point of view somehow outside of or behind what is presented within the movie - is the first introduced to us: Once a Hong Kong resident, he is now a New York-based documentarian, currently working on the Disneyland project in Hong Kong. Through Wei Ming's voice-over narrative and also through "his" documentarian's lens, we learn that he is nostalgic of a Hong Kong that has already passed or is disappearing right in front of his eyes, and at the same time, he is profoundly uncertain of what the future might bring. The other two protagonists are fundamentally the same in one regard: Like Wei Ming, their life seems to have been suspended at someplace between the past and the future. Larry, a dancer living between self-denial and self-acceptance of homosexuality, habitually gives false telephone numbers after casual sex at sauna house. Trapped in yearning for love/inclusion and traumatic fear of rejection/exclusion, on the other hand, Mimi secretly oscillates between peaceful self-containment and madness.

The encounter of the three turns out to be a life-changing experience, as each is forced - in a friendly way - to confront his/her own secret. Initially mad at Larry's gayness and then at the relationship between Larry and Wei Ming, Mimi has to face herself when her secret desire and fear are simultaneously presented, that is, when she chances upon Wei Ming and Larry's lovemaking, and the couple - per her request - proceeded in spite of her presence. Larry goes to his high school counselor who was the source of his guilt complex. Wei Ming visits his father, whose source of income has come under suspicion in the wake of Nazi gold scandal. Some secret, however, may not be easily uncovered. Toward the end of the movie, Wei Ming departs for New York (and his boyfriend Bill), and six months later promises - on a videotape - his next return.

This movie is as atypical as a Hong Kong movie could be. As if a visual documentation of the disappearing, traditional Hong Kong, there is barely any images of modernity or hyper-modernity usually associated with this global city. Instead, it is filled with images of run-down neighborhoods, backstreet alleys, street vendors, neighborhood grocery store, pomelo lantern, etc. This certainly has to do with the fact that Evans Chan, the scriptwriter and director, is a documentarian. While working with both documentary realism and fiction in this case, Chan clearly rejects fiction-for-the-sake-of-make-believe, as he rigorously weaves fiction (such as fictive characters) with self-reflexive and poetic documentary - or what may otherwise be considered faux pas in conventional make-believe fiction movie. The end result is a fine combination of realism, poetics, and social critique. I sincerely look forward to seeing other movies by Evans Chan.

Click here to download The Map of Sex and Love.

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Tags: Drama, Foreign, Romance