Writer-director Norris Wong's Hong Kong-based 2019 romantic drama (arguably an anti-romantic drama) has a premise that, in occidental Hollywood, may well have launched a thousand lookalike PG-13 rated featherweight rom-coms (Hugh Grant, Sandra Bullock, or Drew Barrymore in a key role, definitely). But on home soil, the material is played perfectly straight, and poignantly so.
Fong (Stephy Tang) works—more dutifully than passionately—in a "marriage service" family-owned business that arranges all details of weddings, from dresses and catering to kitschy videography, for scores of Far East couples. Many of the brides and grooms seem to be getting hitched over shallow ulterior motives, such as the coveted residences now given away by in-laws as a sort of dowery.
Fong herself has been content in a seven-year live-in relationship with Edward (Pak Hon Chu), a good-hearted but mother-dominated partner in the business. When Edward stages his own elaborate public proposal to Fong, the woman must confront a long-concealed secret. Before she met Edward, Fong earned the money to move away from her stifling parents by selling herself in an arranged marriage to a Mainlander trying to earn his travel VISA.
But the fixer behind the scheme was arrested, and Fong never obtained a promised quickie divorce. Now she must furtively track down her long-unseen husband Yang (Jin Kaijie) and finalize the split. But her actions trigger Edward's suspicions, and Fong's interactions with her covert "spouse" have her beginning to question her own destiny.
Tang, a top starlet in Cantonese cinema, is vulnerable, appealing, and believably conflicted as the doesn't-know-what-she-wants heroine. Most all of the characters are painted in multiple shades of ambiguity, desire, and disenchantment, and the crowded HK nation-state itself becomes a sort of secondary character (viewers should know that "Prince Edward" is actually the name of the neighborhood in which much of the plot takes place).
It is significant that filmmaker Wong prominently places a poster of Michel Gondry's relationships-gone-wrong fantasy Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in the background of a few scenes. Even that Jim Carrey mind-stretcher had a bit more of a firm finale than My Prince Edward does, but as a bluesy, perceptive heartache in a fresh, unfamiliar setting that is still as messy as real life, Wong's feature comes recommended for foreign-language shelves. Aud: P