Hong Kong's fledgling independent film scene has been given a welcome boost by the inclusion in this year's competition of first-time director Yu Lik-Wai's Love Will Tear Us Apart. Having previously worked as a cinematographer on such recent films as Jia Zhangke's Xia Wu and Ann Hui's Ordinary Heroes, Yu made his directing debut with the documentary Neon Goddesses (1996), which won the Hong Kong Independent Short Film And Video Award.

His first fiction feature began life as a small-scale project funded by Hong Kong's Arts Development Council, but it expanded rapidly when Yu brought prestigious director Stanley Kwan on board as a producer and persuaded The Lover star Tony Leung to defer his usual salary to take a role. The resulting HK$4 million (US$535,000) movie won the Fipresci prize at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival, and has gone on to become one of only a handful of films to represent the territory at Cannes.

Love Will Tear Us Apart is a character-driven story about the lives of workers who have immigrated to Hong Kong from mainland China.

Capitalist Hong Kong has often been seen as a Utopia by those in the Communist mainland, and some attempt to reach the territory in the hope of making their fortune. Sadly, many Chinese immigrants find they are marginalised when they arrive, and end up scraping a living in menial jobs.

All the major characters in Yu's film are recent immigrants from mainland China. Quin, in her early forties, works as a lift operator in a Chinese restaurant. She once had a family and worked as a dance teacher in China, but a tragic accident has since reduced her life to a nostalgic reverie. She lives with a younger man, Ah Jian, but their relationship is more platonic than sexual.

Ah Jian meets a young Chinese actress, whose father recently killed himself. Somehow, she manages to get a two-week visa to Hong Kong, and tries to make as much money as she can by working as a prostitute. Meanwhile, there's another lost character, a lonely young man who spends his time indulging his sexual fantasies.

Executive Producer Freddie Wong feels the film will give both foreigners and Hong Kong residents the chance to see the territory from a different perspective. "The film's focus is the experience of the immigrants," he says. "This gives a different view of Hong Kong. It also shows the way many Hong Kongers relate to China, post-handover."

Critic Derek Malcolm, President of the HKIFF Fipresci Jury, agrees. "It's a stark yet compassionate view of human relationships in the context of the changing social fabric of Hong Kong," he says.

The immigration issue in Hong Kong is currently highly charged - many fear an influx of immigrant labour that will undercut an already shrinking job market. But, says Wong, the film has no wider political or social agenda, and sticks closely to the lives of its characters. Yu's film takes no overt political stance on immigration, rather it simply presents the various ways immigrants assimilate into Hong Kong society.

They are not lucky people, and most of them have sad stories. But Yu does not make it melodramatic or tragic. His characters are tough, and they stand up for themselves, even though they're having a tough time in a tough society.

"Migrants, by nature, are perpetual victims of a nostalgia for somewhere else," says Yu. "This film wants to be a sort of pathology of being Chinese in my native city. It is not so much a film on marginality. Rather, I would like to examine the duality of being marginal. On the one hand, there is a wish to conform. On the other hand, there's a desire to break out and rebel." Richard James Havis