A group of younger Hong Kong faces gets their big screen shot in Moments of Love. The story of five crisscrossing youth romances, Moments of Love gets immediate cred for good use of its overcrowded Mongkok location, plus a couple of bonus points for the occasional telling moment. It also gets a quick dismissal for an abundance of useless moments, annoying storytelling devices, and sometimes uninteresting acting. But hey, at least they tried.
     TVB star Ron Ng leads the cast as a marketing peon who engages in a fiery professional/personal spat with colleague Race Wong. Meanwhile, a high school student V (Vivian Yeo) begins to pay too-close attention to her young teacher (Wilfred Lau). Sassy waitress Yuki (Yan Ng) begins getting mysterious text messages, and she thinks they're from a cute guy (Don Li) who's been giving her the eye. Sadly, she spends more time running into geeky guy Ronald (Hins Cheung), who wears pronounced braces and sings karaoke pretty damn well. Sing (Steven Cheung) discovers a suicide note, and looks for the writer to placate his girlfriend Fong (Natalie Tong), but his behavior starts to get a little loony. Finally, loutish Doby (Deep Ng) has a nasty breakup with his girlfriend Wiz (Macy Chan), which involves him shouting at her despicably. Regretting his outburst, he opens a business where customers pay to express their angry, and sometimes violent feelings towards him.
     As youth romances go, Moments of Love has its positives. The occasional rumination on love and youth manages to work, especially in light of the film's disjointed narrative. Some of the actors are decent, if not noteworthy, and director Billy Chung uses his Mongkok location exceptionally well. Though the stories themselves sometimes lack credibility, they do seem to take on more life when set against the teeming masses on the Mongkok streets. Unfortunately, the film also possesses its share of missteps, including mistimed attempts at comedy, sometimes unearned sentiment, and a performance from Deep Ng that should have been reined in via riot police, or at least a good straitjacket. Furthermore, the film is far too cursory (Five stories in only 90 minutes?) to truly affect. There are some moments in Moments of Love, but ultimately they're rather mild ones. (Kozo 2006)

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image courtesy of Universe Laser and Video Co, Ltd.