Just married Hong Kong couple Chen & Lily emigrate to England, soon to become parents to a little baby boy and generally struggle through life. Chen works long days in a restaurant, while Lily does the housekeeping, daydreaming of setting up their own business, much to Chen's chagrin. When Chen lets his colleague Fok seduce him down a path of mounting gambling debts, he is recruited as a drug courier for a shadowy Chinese triad. Suddenly he realizes that getting their own enterprise could be their only means of escape.
Acting
Sylvia Chang's simmering desperation as trapped housewife Lily.
Production
Authentic, unglamorous recreation of 1980s Chinese-British life.
Director
Mike Newell
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Director Mike Newell later helmed Four Weddings and a Funeral — this is his grittier, hungrier early work.
Based on Timothy Mo's Booker-shortlisted novel, one of the first major British works centering Chinese immigrant experience.
GB
