Evans Chan Yiu-shing's directorial debut came at a critical point in Hong Kong's history. When the US-educated critic-turned-filmmaker began production for To Liv(e) in 1991, the city was in a state of confusion, with the population still ambivalent about the 1997 handover while the colonial authorities struggled to resolve the Vietnamese boatpeople problem.

Chan's film - to be screened on April 29 at the Hong Kong Arts Centre as part of a retrospective of the director's work - looks at how these two issues are manifestations of the same notion of cultural dislocation, at home and away. The two couples in the film are victims of this malaise: John (Fung Kin-chung) is an anglicised Chinese living in denial of his own ancestry while his mixed-blood wife Rubie (Lindzay Chan) gets agitated by international criticism of Hong Kong's repatriation of the boatpeople.

Meanwhile, Rubie's younger brother Tony (Anthony Wong Yiu-ming) is planning to leave for the US with his older divorced girlfriend, Teresa (Josephine Koo Mei-wah), but Rubie disapproves.