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Known for scripts that feature adroit verbal exchanges between characters, Joyce Chan surprises here with characters who spout lyrical soliloquys. Of the many films she has scripted, this is perhaps the most literary and is adapted from her novel of the same title, which itself is based on a short story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Joyce ingeniously takes a character from the original story and gives him a name and the persona of Okagawa (Tony Leung Ka-fai), a Japanese author visiting China, whose writing becomes inspired and his passion for life rekindled, albeit temporarily, by the simple innocent prostitute Kam-fa (Yasuko Tomita). Okagawa's sophisticated and sentimental personality contrasts with that of the naïve and usually cheerful Kam-fa. His sickness and her subsequent contraction of syphilis stoke their compassion for one another. Jumbling national identities, this Sino-Japanese big-budget production was set in the scenic regions of the Qinhuai River.

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