2/5 stars

Since it premiered at the 2024 Shanghai International Film Festival, Guan Hu’s pandemic-set drama A Man and a Woman has been languishing in a quarantine-like limbo for almost two years, save for a screening at last summer’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Finally emerging into the cold light of day, this story of two Chinese travellers who are forced to isolate in the same Hong Kong hotel at the height of the Covid-19 lockdown proves every bit as challenging to sit through as the pandemic itself was to endure.

Referred to only by their room numbers, “410” (played by Huang Bo) and “412” (Ni Ni) must undergo a mandatory 21-day stay at one of the city’s allocated quarantine hotels after their transfer flight arrives.

Assigned to adjacent rooms, the strangers soon discover they have been given each other’s luggage, and after making contact via their neighbouring balconies, start sharing cigarettes and increasingly personal details about their lives.

The isolation could not have happened at a worse time for either of them – 412 is racing home from London to see her dying mother, leaving her 10-year-old son with a guardian who is now refusing to care for him; while 410 is overwhelmed by deadlines and debt that are adding pressure to his own family situation.