Jeremy Irons plays a gaunt, seriously ailing European (again), who, in the waning days of Britain's lease on Hong Kong, is forced to confront his unresolved romantic feelings for a Chinese friend (Gong Li). Irons, however, must also deal with secrets from Li's past, as well as her current relationship with prosperous businessman Michael Hui. If you think Chinese Box sounds like a heavy-handed political allegory, you're right, but that doesn't make it a bad film. The script—by Jean-Claude Carriere (a former collaborator of Luis Buñuel and Louis Malle) and Larry Gross (48 Hours) from a story by Carriere, Paul Theroux, and director Wayne Wang (Chan Is Missing, The Joy Luck Club, Smoke)—is a nice mix of slow-paced, New Wave-inspired, metaphor-rich wandering and more conventional drama. The many documentary-like scenes of Irons wandering the streets of his adopted city with a video camera, attempting to capture the strange mix of colony and mystery he's grown to love, are often fascinating, as is a subplot involving the excellent Maggie Cheung as a badly scarred, intensely guarded, aggressively hucksterish street vendor. Though it's not incredibly engaging—it works better on a symbolic level than a dramatic one—Chinese Box does an excellent job capturing a unique, odd moment in history.