Ta xue xun mei

Director Philip Yung's PORT OF CALL's central incident is the brutal murder of a young 16-year-old Hunan girl who moved to Hong Kong with her family and fell into prostitution. Winding through time and grounded by Christopher Doyle's gauzy cinematography, the film follows both the story of the young girl's descent into sex work and Aaron Kwok's grizzled detective as he obsessively seeks an answer to the brutality of the murder. Kwok is astonishing here in his career's best role, with all the tics and haggard body language of a man beaten down by the violence that threatens to drown him at every turn. (Hawaii International Film Festival)