Art
She is a teacher of Chinese literature, reciting poems and recounting the brilliance of ancient Chinese poets before a class of students whose common parlance is foul language. He is a hormone-charged teenager who makes a paper plane for the teacher from a torn textbook page doodled with drawings of the object of his fantasy. She is a divorcee whose husband was rumoured to have an affair with a student in his school. With partly fascination and partly curiosity, he starts making suggestive remarks in class and stalking her outside the school, rattling her with flirtation. Both carrying a heavy load of baggage, the teacher and her student are about to ignite a spark that will scorch them both.
There are people and places that we used to hold dear in our hearts and gradually became sediments of buried memories. When Charlotte encounters a suitcase at the second hand shop she works at, her emotions are unearthed and bring her back to the days of innocence with Chan. Charlotte did believe that Chan, just like the neighbourhood in bygone times, would remain constant. Yet all old things are helplessly abandoned and crushed beneath the wheel of time. At the same time, Ling is depressed and lonely because of Chan's death. Sending Chan's things away to purge her negative emotions and to set herself free from the past, a treasured relationship reveals itself like ripples of emotions.
Music is the common language that draws people together. Johann Bach’s Goldberg Variations brings the two lonely and unrelated people in the film - an inconspicuous mid-aged man Joe and a once popular actress Shu closer. A subtle and occasional encounter takes place in the remote country side where Joe is the night shift storekeeper and Shu goes to the area for shooting. When Joe plays this particular work of Bach, Shu is touched and shares with him her miserable life experiences. He feels that there is a bonding between them until he attempts to explore more into this illusive “relationship”.
A young girl who believes that the world will end in 2012 lives only for the present. Working in a bookstore, she spends her days on menial day-to-day tasks and sitting on a roof to anticipate the end of all things. One day, the bookstore owner tells the young girl that she can do more than just simply wait. In a world where the future appears bleak and hopeless, should we prepare for a painless end, or it possible for us to stand up and make a change?
The textbook definition of a good citizen is a person who works hard, helps others and respects the law. A night minivan driver witnesses a crime and chases the robber down an alley and confronts him. A bloody fistfight ensues. But when the shot cuts to his close-up in the confined space of the interrogation room, we find him looking ragged and unkempt, trying hard to give a coherent account of what had happened to a hostile plain clothes cop, wondering if it pays to be a good citizen when one becomes punished for one’s own good intentions.
In our daydreams, we always dream about who we can be and what we can do. Chak is always living between his dream state – where he is admired and can get any girl he wants – and the reality – where he is constantly teased by his sexually frustrated, foul-mouthed friends. One day, Chak's dream becomes reality when he finds the acceptance of a girl he likes, but cruel reality eventually stops him once more. Instead of running away, Chak must face the real world head-on this time around.
