Lost in Time: Obstacle course [DVD note]

Starring Cecilia Cheung Pak-Chi, Lau Ching-Wan
Written by James Yuen Sai-Sang, Clarence Lee, Jessica Fong Ching
Directed by Derek Yee Tung-Sing

Cecilia Cheung's fiance is a minibus driver who runs a red light and gets creamed. Our grieving girl wants to keep her boyfriend's kid, so she needs cash. She comes to the logical and impractical answer: fix the minibus and drive it herself. But being a woman, she drives safely, which means her troubles pile up. She gets HARASSED BY GANGS. She receives a FAKE BANKNOTE. Someone THROWS UP IN HER BUS. She GETS A TICKET. So Lau Ching-Wan has to teach her how to drive as recklessly as her late man.

The plot bounces through sillier turns than this, but the writers have a decent idea of how love and family work, and the characters are likable enough for the inevitable sentimentality to mean something. Cheung is radiant in suffering (her sister claims she look pallid, which is nonsense), trying to look under control while cracking in not-so-subtle ways. The acting side of things of things is carried by Paul Chun and Bau Hei-Jing as Cheung's parents, and especially by Lau, playing the kind, slightly rough surrogate hubbie and daddy. He even defuses the kid's cloyingness (the fault of the script, not the young actor) by flatly refusing to be upstaged.
B PLUS