However, Chan is not the loud and leery character one might expect. Not a tall man by any measure, Chan's civility sometimes borders on timidity. He greets new acquaintances with a two-handed handshake - a gesture accompanied by a deferential, if somewhat shambling, half-bow.

Having turned up nearly half an hour late for our meeting, he apologises profusely as he takes his seat. A veteran of the Hong Kong film industry - he first came to prominence in 1984 with his screenplay for Behind the Yellow Line, a romance featuring Anita Mui Yim-fong, Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing and Maggie Cheung Man-yuk - he is never one to brag about his career achievements. He is, in fact, candid about his own flaws and failures, and is more likely to praise others - as he does with Janet Chun Siu-chun, co-director of his latest film, La Lingerie.

Yes, you heard correctly: Chan - who, under the pseudonym Ah Foon, still pens a daily newspaper column called Extreme Chauvinist, and whose previous directorial efforts featured men as leading protagonists - has made a film based on women's undergarments.

But unlike his 2001 outing, La Brassiere - which despite the title revolves around the way two bra designers (Sean Lau Ching-wan and Louis Koo Tin-lok) see their misogynist arrogance shot to smithereens at work and at home - La Lingerie is a film about five young women struggling to find perfect love. Admittedly, the film doesn't offer its characters emancipation - the central figure, Miu (Stephy Tang Lai-yan), who is in pursuit of her Prince Charming, bristles with sexual stereotypes - nevertheless it's a significantly different turn for Chan.

La Lingerie was born out of Single Blog, a film Chan worked on as producer for young director Lee Po-cheung. The storyline about three young women tackling adulterous boyfriends, nerdy suitors and same-sex romance could almost be seen as a more unadulterated (and adult-oriented) precursor to La Lingerie, the Chinese title of which translates as 'Underwear Girls'.

'We did some research for [Single Blog] and interviewed 50 or 60 people about their lives,' says Chan. 'We found that new generations of women are becoming more independent. Take their habits of watching films. In the past it was more about what men wanted to see, and this shaped the way the industry leaned heavily towards gun-ridden action films. But now it's more about what women want to go and see - and their partners follow. With financial independence comes the ability to master their own lives.'

Such observations about the shift in consumption patterns at the cinema - validated by the box office success of films such as Sex and the City - speaks volumes about Chan's motivations in delving into so-called chick-flick territory. And there are scenes which no doubt mirror real-life predicaments. For example, there's Miu's dilemma as she faces candidates, ranging from a dorky bank manager to a womaniser, as well as a bizarre love triangle involving Miu's cousin, her middle-aged boyfriend and his young scion. A flight attendant also falls for a penniless young man, despite her aspirations to marry rich.

Chan says La Lingerie also addresses how long-held beliefs about sexual differences no longer obtain. 'There's a scene in which a woman actually takes in a young man as a rent boy,' he says. 'It reflects how things could be in times of economic depression. However much they struggle, these boys can't find success, and so they look for the odd job here and there rather than aiming high.'

The notion of men struggling to maintain their patriarchical prestige has been a long-running leitmotif in Chan's work. Having begun his career as a screenwriter - he had a hand in the script for John Woo Yu-sum's 1986 hit A Better Tomorrow - Chan first shot to prominence with The Yuppie Fantasia, a long-running radio play he developed with broadcaster-actor Lawrence Cheng Tan-shui. The project's Chinese title, Diary of a Small Man, is a perfect summary of its bare essentials. The story centres around an ordinary young, urban professional who dreams of having a high-flying career and a life filled with sexual adventure. In reality, his mediocre life is constantly being turned upside down by demanding supervisors at work and an irate wife at home. The play would eventually spawn two films, plus another collaboration with Cheng on Never Ending Summer (1992), which again features the actor as a stranded yuppie trying to reinvent himself after a marital breakdown.

The late 90s saw Chan writing a slew of screenplays for crime thrillers, among them 1998's Beast Cops, which revolves around the odd pairing of no-nonsense, straitlaced officer Mike (Michael Wong) and the triad-befriending lawman Tung (Anthony Wong Chau-sang), which won best screenplay at the Hong Kong Film Awards.

But it's only since he began directing that his obsession with 'small men' became a constant theme in his work. Whether it was La Brassiere or its sequel Mighty Baby (in which the former's two leading characters juggle baby products and their messy love lives); Good Times, Bed Times (Koo plays a character battling impotence and Lau a recently dumped man who becomes the object of a younger woman's lust); Naked Ambition (in which two goofy graduates try their luck at launching a porn magazine); and last year's Simply Actors (about a bumbling policeman) - all focus on downtrodden men.

And there's one more thing which links all his work: the sexual innuendo, rarely found in films produced over the past decade.

'The films of the 1970s and 80s were very naughty and there's an anything-goes attitude to them,' says Chan. 'People back then were much more daring than today. Since the 1990s there's been a fear of upsetting people and a lot of things are no-go.

'I was always taken aback by how in Patrick Tam Ka-ming's films, for example, the actors don't wear bras, and yet the films still avoided becoming lewd and overtly sexual. Now everything's so po-faced here, and that's why I wanted to do something risque.

'Since the emergence of the mainland Chinese market in the 1990s, we've been faced with the issue of the censors. It's very well known that co-productions have to consider this, but creative personnel fear such restrictions. It's like back in the 1970s and 80s, when some producers would forgo the markets in Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, and just make films for Hong Kong audiences.

'It's perfectly understandable that distributors would want to trade in something that caters for the mainland - actually, I won't mind if they're forced to conjure up edited versions [of films]. But they shouldn't leave the onus on filmmakers.'

One wonders whether this is the naughty self-proclaimed chauvinist or the crusader for free expression talking - or maybe a bit of both.

La Lingerie opens next Friday