Why this film won the Cannes Award is not surprising, all political. French cinema is stale and dead. In tune with the Year of China in France, forced globalization makes them pick a Hong Kong legend to revive their cinema.<br /><br />But the film is a piece of nightmare. The script is bad, the scenery is bland. The editing is so slow it seems to be edited by my 93 year old grandma. The continuity is sketchy and the f-stops were not even measured right for some scenes.<br /><br />The only wonderful moments were when Maggie Cheung onto screen. The screen began to light up, be filled with presence even without speech dialogue or anything. It shows that perhaps Olivier Assayas was in love or at least infatuated with this Asian star.<br /><br />But a film, like a marriage, needs continuity, it needs communication. The level of communication in this film is low and there is no character progress. The great part of the film is when Maggie works in a Chinese restaurant and quits and she speaks something spontaneous in Cantonese, which was very authentic. And the scene where she looked for her son was heart-breaking in its sensitivity as a lost mother.<br /><br />But the editing, soundtrack and in general the film making techniques just sucked so so baaaad....feels like a home movie..