<B> 2005 Venice Film Festival A beautiful lady is surrounded by four men who swear to give up everything for her because they love her?and she doesn’t choose to remain with any of them. Rather, love may be purity that can only be observed and never accepted in the city of Shanghai, a mixture of new and old, East and West. Nor can those who survive the modern history of China accept it. Thus, for the men who leave or for the woman left alone, there’s only more remorse. These are the ‘everlasting regrets’. Stanley Kwan, the filmmaker who raised the level of Hong Kong melodrama and a representative of the Hong Kong New Wave of the 1980s, met with Wang Anyi, China’s best, popular living writer. The novel <Everlasting Regret> is about one woman’s life set in Shanghai from the 1940s up to the present. It was revered as a Chinese literary masterpiece in the ‘90s, and the film directed by Kwan was among the most anticipated Chinese film projects this year?along with Jackie Chan’s <The Myth> and Tsui Hark’s <Seven Swords>. Hong Kong’s most popular female singer/actress, Sammi Cheng, plays the leading role of Qiyao in the big film, which also features Tony Leung Ka-fai in its all-star cast. Kwan’s restrained direction portrays the international city of Shanghai and people’s lives just as in the original work but simultaneously creates an allegory to modern Hong Kong that allows the savoring of multi-leveled meanings. Along with the listless music reminiscent of the 1940s, it could be a story about all cities and city people around the world. Kwon Yong-min