Sammi Cheng and Andy Lau mix love with office politics in Needing You...

Though they’ve begun to dabble in commercial cinema (see Running Out of Time), Milkyway Productions has never done a movie this fluffy and inconsequential. Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai have adapted a Metro Radio audio play about workplace romance and gossip, and even brought in the two stars who performed said play: Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng. The result is probably the most satisfying and enjoyable HK romance since The Golden Girls.

Lau is Wah-Siu, womanizing top sales manager of an HK electronics firm. Cheng is Kinki, one of his newly transferred assistants, who finds her boyfriend Dan (Gabriel Harrison) cheating on her. Kinki is an emotionally unusual girl. Given to fits of pathological cleaning, Kinki is a perpetual doormat but a pure-hearted girl (is there ever any other type in an HK romance?). Though Wah-Siu initially finds Kinki an awful employee, he eventually recognizes her kindness and work ethic, and proceeds to befriend and mentor her in resolving her situation with Dan. Meanwhile, old flame Fiona (Fiona Leung) arrives and senses that Kinki may be occupying to much to Wah-Siu’s time. She arranges to have internet mogul Roger Young (Raymond Wong) squire Kinki, which drives Wah-Siu into his own romantically-depressed spiral.

This airy movie sounds like a typical weeper, but Johnnie To and Wai-Ka Fai find new ways to entertain. Wah-Siu and Kinki are both overdrawn but likable and identifiable characters, and their romantic trials are told more through incidental action than verbal affirmation. Leave it to the Milkyway guys to pioneer a cinematic romantic comedy. When whole pages of exposition can be substituted by one finely-timed gesture or action, it makes moviegoing all the more enjoyable. Sammi Cheng and Andy Lau manage to find some genuine chemistry, with Cheng turning in a delightfully endearing performance. Her goofy charm and girlish grace make her the most winning HK romantic comedy lead since Anita Yuen. At the halfway point of 2000, Needing You qualifies as the best Hong Kong film of the year. (Kozo 2000)

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