Is it really being in love with someone if you never get to love them? Your friends may call it infatuation, your therapist may call it fantasy, but surely there are some criteria: what you truly know about a person, how much time you've actually spent with them, and the duality of mutual respect and desire that allows you to say that you are, in fact, in love. Movies, of course, usually never take this into consideration, with entire plots often following a love born from a single interaction (see above: infatuation; fantasy). Told over 10 years, Peter Ho-sun Chan's modern friendship-cum-romance film Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996) portrays two Chinese mainlanders working their way up in the bustle of Hong Kong.
Qiao (Maggie Cheung, in a standout role the same year she led Olivier Assayas's Irma Vep) juggles an array of small jobs in her determination to achieve a better life. “I have many friends if I want. If I have time, I would rather make more money,” she tells Xiaojun (Leon Lai, who'd just starred in Wong’s Fallen Angels). He's also come to Hong Kong in search of riches—but because he is devoted to saving up so that his girlfriend can leave their small hometown and join him in the big city. Xiaojun immediately feels indebted to the business-minded Qiao, who helps him sign up for English classes (at a school where she makes a commission on enrollments). His persistent kindness to her forges a friendship ultimately founded on the convenience that comes with not having other friends in Hong Kong yet: he has the time to help her with her oddjobs, and she now has an assistant always available for work. They slide into a casual routine of codependent time-killing. Before the Internet gave access to the distracting infatuations and fantasies of anyone anywhere at any time, what else could you do except love the one you're with?
But Qiao, alone in the city with no partner to write home to, is aware that her relationship with Xiaojun is finite, conditional on his solo need to hustle in the city. He remains committed to his girlfriend, Xiaoting (Kristy Yeung), who will one day join him to build a life together. Qiao may still be his friend then, but the camaraderie she has with Xiaojun, and the thoughtfulness he shows her when they're alone, will necessarily have to change—with no hard feelings, despite the fact that Qiao and Xiaojun begin sleeping together. Xiaojun, aware and unconcerned with his girlfriend's eventual arrival, sees no issue with the closeness he has with Qiao, and is blind to how painful it is for her to be his tenderly cared-for fuckbuddy in the city. When he gets her help choosing a bracelet for Xiaoting's birthday, he surprises Qiao with the same one as a gift. Thinking he's being kind, his gesture only reveals that he values the two women equally, even though he's planning a future with only one of them and never discusses that future with the other. Fed up with his inconsiderate ignorance of how she might be feeling as his stand-in partner, Qiao ends things with Xiaojun. He deals with his depression—and possible guilt—by writing endless love letters to his girlfriend, who knows nothing about his friend-cum-fake-partner-in-the-city.
Over the next eight years, from Hong Kong to New York City, reconciliation endlessly tempts Xiaojun and Qiao. But if you don't know if you love the one you're with, do you really know if you love the one you're without?
Comrades, Almost a Love Story screens tonight, June 30, at Fort Greene Park. It will be preceded by David Ma’s To Become a Lion.
