Tsang Tsui-Shan’s first feature film is a meditative look at the concept of place and where (if anywhere) we belong in this increasingly dislocated and globalized world. It’s a slow, simple picture, but it won 2009’s Best Feature Award at the Taiwan Film and Video Festival.

The story follows a Hong Kong couple who move to Beijing despite obvious problems with their relationship. There, the boyfriend works in a design company and adapts quickly to life on the Chinese Mainland, while his girlfriend, Chang Lei, finds the move more of a challenge. As she wanders Beijing, she realizes that most of the people there are also strangers in one way or another, having migrated from other parts of the country or abroad, and she gradually comes to find beauty in the dislocation she feels.

Lei and her boyfriend muddle through, sometimes sharing moments of communication and tenderness, at other times inhabiting each other’s lives like ghosts. Lei meets a carefree Japanese guy and they wander and talk, and share an intimacy that Lei lacks with her boyfriend. But this is not a love triangle. There are no anguished choices to be made between head and heart. Instead, all the characters brush past each other, interact briefly and move on. All of them, and all of us, the director seems to say, are lovers on the road of life, learning and experiencing but departing again in the morning on our own paths.

The acting, particularly by some of the supplementary characters, is impressively naturalistic, which gives some scenes the feel of a Mike Leigh film. A lot of what we see seems improvised. At times, this can go too far. Some scenes and threads of the story lead nowhere and seem superfluous. In the film’s early scenes, before Lei’s character has opened up to the world, there is not really enough in the relationship between her and her boyfriend to sustain the plot. However, director Tsang is wise enough to keep the film to a brisk 75 minutes, and avoid the overindulgent, lingering shots that are often the curse of low-budget debut features.

The ponderous pace is also helped by the lead character’s extraordinary beauty. Actress Joman Chiang is the archetypal girl next door, but there is something sublime about her look. The beguiling combination reinforces the film’s underlying theme, namely that beauty can be found everywhere, from the feeling of the sun on your face to the quiet hopes and aspirations of everyday people.

DETAILS

What: Lovers on the Road 恋人路上

Where: Available on DVD

Language: Chinese with English subtitles