Films by director Stanley Kwan Kam-pang beg the question: what is art? Previous efforts like Centre Stage, Full Moon In New York, and Red Rose, White Rose win awards and are lauded as the artistic peak of Hong Kong cinema. An equally vociferous opposing camp find these movies the height of artistic pretentiousness. The debate continues with Hold You Tight.
The movie has all the hallmarks of a critical favourite: a non-linear story line, gay sex, male frontal nudity, and a 'commercial' star in her first 'serious' role. The film is certainly Kwan's most personal work to date. Yet as intriguing as these elements may be, they do not gel into a movie that is particularly interesting or profound.
Jimmy Ngai Siu-yan's script deals with themes common in Kwan's oeuvre: unrequited love, lost love, and tainted love. People come and go, their paths cross, they have sex and/or become emotionally involved, but in the end they never experience or come to know the meaning of true love. Moon (Chingmy Yau Suk-ching) is unhappily married to Wai (Sunny Chan Kam-hung) and has an affair with their apartment complex's Taiwanese lifeguard, Jie (Ke You-lin).
Moon goes to Taiwan but dies in a plane crash. The sexually ambivalent Jie becomes obsessed with Wai, who has a secret admirer in gay real estate agent Tong (Eric Tsang Chi-wai). Wai and Tong eventually become close friends, though they never have a physical relationship. Jie goes back to Taiwan, where he meets boutique owner Rosa (also played by Chingmy Yau).
The film does not relate the plot in a linear time-frame, so it is in the movie's opening scene at Kai Tak Airport that we see Rosa berate her Filipina maid for misplacing her travel documents, causing her to miss the flight that takes Moon to her death.
A prominent sub-plot involves Sandra Ng Kwun-yu as the manager of a video shop patronised by Moon and Wai - but this, like the unconventional time-frame, seems extraneous to the effectiveness and success of the movie as a whole.