Lost in transition

Putting the poignant class issue aside, the cast's superb performances alone are worth paying to see. Multi-award winner actress Siqin Gaowa (斯琴高娃) breaks off her usual stately onscreen persona and brings to life the stingy, loud and sometimes childlike main character with ease. Her male match, Hong Kong's film great Chow, makes the highly anticipated return to a comic role that may come as a pleasant surprise to those who are only familiar with the star's tough guy image in his early Hong Kong gangster flicks or the cultivated, repressed sword man in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍).