There are Saturday nights when it feels as if the terrestrials aren't really trying at all, and Saturday nights when both sides are showing something unmissable.
Tonight is one of those nights, and the choice is either spiritual enlightenment on TVB, presented by Bernardo Bertolucci in Little Buddha (Pearl, 9.30pm) or a superior historical gangster movie on ATV, Zhang Yimou's Shanghai Triad (World, 9.30pm). Or to put it more crudely, Keanu Reeves half-naked in full body make-up or Gong Li pouting and sexy in skimpy cheong sams and red feathers.
Little Buddha is a film about Tibetan Buddhism, so given the current fuss about two new films on the same subject, Seven Years in Tibet and Red Corner - which it seems we are unlikely ever to see here - the scheduling is notable.
Not that there is so much as a mention of the DL in this production, although Lama Norbu, played with enormous charm by Ying Ruocheng, himself an NPC delegate and former member of the Chinese government, does make a joke early on about 'a room never being empty when your mind is full. You learn that in prison.' He also describes himself as in exile 'since the occupation'.
That is as far as Bertolucci goes to root this story in anything like reality. Little Buddha is about a quest to find the reincarnation of a great lama who died in Seattle. It is there Lama Norbu thinks he has found him, in the form of blond local boy Jesse Conrad (Alex Wiesendanger). His parents, played well by Bridget Fonda and badly by Chris Isaak, are a bit non-plussed by this news, but eventually agree to let him go to Bhutan to see if he really is the departed lama.
To help Jesse learn a little bit about the religion, Norbu gives him a children's guide to the life of Prince Siddhartha, who became Buddha. As Jesse works his way through the story, it appears on-screen in glorious colour, a contrast to the cold blue of the scenes set in Seattle.
