Dir: Fruit Chan. Hong Kong, Japan, UK, France. 2001. 108 mins.

Director Fruit Chan is living proof that there is more to Hong Kong cinema than Kung Fu actioners. Hollywood, Hong Kong is the second of a planned trilogy of films dealing with prostitutes from mainland China; the first was Durian, Durian, which made a small splash at last year's Venice festival. Chan's latest effort, in Venice once again, is a tender black comedy - if such a thing is possible - set in Hong Kong's last shanty town. It is not an easy film to get but its exquisitely Chinese blend of the sentimental and the grotesque - with more than a pinch of Asian social realism - is quietly convincing. Though its market is by no means mainstream, Hollywood Hong Kong could turn out to be a cult, word-of-mouth success on the arthouse circuit.

The setting is a metaphor for the new Hong Kong, which is having to cope not only with being part of China, but also with taking second place to Shanghai in the happening stakes. Fruit Chan never tires of pointing out that Hong Kong too has its underclass - represented in the present case by an oversize, all-male family - father, big son, and little son - who make a living out of roasting pork in the former colony's last shanty town. Above the corrugated iron shacks rise the residential towers and shopping centre known as 'Hollywood' - and it is here that the vivacious young girl lives who drops suddenly into the family's life, and into the life of a young gangster who lives nearby. But Tong Tong (also known as Hung Hung, or Fong Fong) is, for all her carefree, joyful manner, a potential wrecking ball.

This is a meaty film, in every sense: in Boss Chu's barbecue pork shop, pig carcasses are daubed with red sauce; or they roast, dripping fat, in an infernal blast furnace. People eat, and sweat, and every mouthful and trickle is followed in lingering close-up. Because the inhabitants of this cramped shanty town live on top of one another, characters are viewed through windows, or roofs, or between dangling sides of pork; wherever the camera can get an angle. The film's colour-chart - garish clashes of pink and turquoise, red and orange - match some of the more grotesque plot turns, which revolve around a runway pig called Mama, and around the genetic experiments and do-it-yourself microsurgery of a backstreet doctor. There is little space for sentiment in the lives of Fruit Chan's characters, whose main aims are to get paid, get fed, and - if all goes well - get laid. So it is all the more touching when even the gruff pork-roasting father is swept away by the joys of love.

Prod co: Nicetop Independent Ltd and Hakuhodo Inc jointly present a Movement Pictures Media Suits Inc production in association with Golden Network Asis Ltd.
Int'l sales: Capitol Films Ltd.
Prod: Fruit Chan, Christine Ravet, Doris Yang, Kei Haruna, Sylvain Bursztein.
Scr: Fruit Chan.
Cinematography: O Sing-Pui.
Prod des: Oliver Wong.
Ed: Tim Sam-Fat.
Music: Lam Wah-Chuen, Chu Hing-Chuen.
Main cast: Zhou Xun, Glen Chin, Wong You-Nam, Mama, Ho Sai-Man, Leung Shi-Ping.