With the pending handover to the Mainland Chinese government, 1997 was a trepidatious year for Hong Kongers, and film-makers were no exception. Many questioned if they would even be able to work under the government's strict censorship rules, but yet still be able to survive financially without the backing from large Mainland production companies. Mabel Cheung's entry The Soong Sisters was one of the first forays into large-scale Mainland/Hong Kong co-productions, which, of course, especially in the realm of historical dramas such as this, are now a staple (some might negatively say the mainstay) of modern local Hong Kong film-making.

As the title suggests, the movie centers on three sisters, all of whom would marry to important social, military, and political leaders during the tumultuous times after the 1911 Chinese Revolution. Ai-Ling (Michelle Yeoh) married Hung Cheung-Hei (Jiang Wen), China's wealthiest man and Chiang Kai-Shek's (Wu Hsing-Guo) finance minister, who himself wed another Soong, Mei-Ling (Vivian Wu). The third sister, Ching-Ling (Maggie Cheung), was married to Sun Yat-Sen (Winston Chao), who is considered the father of China's Nationalist party and one of the main catalysts for the overthrow of the Ching dynasty.

Any one of the Soongs' stories could have been made into a film, and so, undertaking one featuring all three of them was ambitious. Mabel Cheung thankfully does not overwhelm the audience with historical minutiae, as some films like this, such as Founding of a Republic, tend to do. By keeping the emphasis more on the relationships between the women and their spouses, Cheung loses historical accuracy, but gains the audience's interest in the process -- at least to an extent. Maggie Cheung, who won a Hong Kong Film Award for her work, does a fine job, but most of Michelle Yeoh's role is hidden behind an extremely obvious Mandarin dub that doesn't sound anything like her real voice, and Vivian Wu is just kind of there, drolly reading her lines with no real sense of zest or life.

Even after fifteen-odd years after The Soong Sisters premiered, the Chinese historical drama has not changed all that much. Due undoubtedly to strict censorship guidelines imposed by the government (this movie went through months of reviews and had to be re-edited several times to gain the government's approval) film-makers working in this genre with Mainland money do not have too much room to work with. Sure, most of these movies are gorgeous to look at (The Soong Sisters took home several technical Hong Kong Film Awards, such as art direction and cinematography) but when the end results feel this hollow and unfulfilling, it all seems like an exercise in futility, especially when you've just sat through a 144-minute picture.

RATING: 5