I saw this intriguing 1997 Hong Kong drama before I read Banana, Yoshimoto’s touching best-selling Japanese novella on which the film is based; clearly the changes from Japanese locations and idioms to Chinese equivalents, not to mention other alterations in the narrative, are both subtle and complex. The gifted writer-director Yim Ho (Homecoming, The Day the Sun Turned Cold) is an able storyteller with a visual flair and some feeling for actors, but what really unifies the film (and the novella) is the powerful feeling of intimacy it creates, as well as the offbeat handling of gender roles. When a young woman’s grandmother dies, she moves into the home of a young hairdresser and his chic mother, who runs a nightclub and has an unexpected pastwhich you may figure out before the film tells you. A touching, fairly unpredictable love story with wacky comic touches, Kitchen is one more illustration of the axiom that Asia is where you go nowadays to find modernity, not to mention the future. (JR)