For Western viewers who have not yet tasted the delights of popular Cantonese cinema, with its sophisticated mixing of genres, this joyous screwball-musical comedy is the perfect entré. Directed by Tsui Hark, whose international reputation as Hong Kong's "whiz kid" began with Butterfly Murders in 1979, it is a wonderfully stylish and stylized film, recreating the chaos of Shanghai in the late forties as a backdrop for a mad romance. Both the mood and the story of love, separation and reunion are subtle evocations of Hong Kong today, which of course is to be reunited with China in 1997. Derek Elley writes, "(In) Tsui Hark's hands (Cantonese comedy) is given universal appeal, recalling the best tenement comedies of the 1930s and 1950s as well as French and Italian models....(It) is a story of mistaken identities, mingling mild farce with melancholia and capturing the luxury and squalor of the period without rubbing the audience's nose in the present-day parallels. As the two flatmates in love with the same beau, Sylvia Chang and Sally Yeh prove accomplished light comediennes, and the script positively oozes invention and energy from every pore."