Starring Shu Qi and Liu Ye. Rated PG. Now playing

The gushy romance A Beautiful Life is about two starkly different people hooking up, but it’s more interesting as a study in the two contrasting sides of modern China.

Set in Beijing, it focuses on Peiru, a fast-living real-estate agent from Hong Kong who wears flashy heels, parties all night, and dates her rich, married boss. During a drunken night at a karaoke club, she has a chance encounter with shy, uptight Zhendong, an off-duty cop who helps her stumble home. They become friends, although he silently hopes for more; he’s been living a lonely, modest life, devoted to caring for his autistic younger brother.

The film takes an overextended, wildly jagging trajectory from there, with an abundance of betrayal, job loss, separation, and serious illness. The acting is strong, with the ethereally beautiful Shu Qi’s flighty party girl finally transforming and coming to realize that the solid Zhendong (Liu Ye) and his less-blingy life may be what she needs. But the movie, which could easily have ended a half-hour before it finally winds up in melodramatic fervour, digresses deep into maudlin territory.

Where director Wai-keung Lau’s (Infernal Affairs) film excels is as a portrait of a society in flux. Beautiful Life moves from Peiru’s glitzy club world and “five-star” apartment to Zhendong’s vividly lensed traditional courtyard home in Beijing to his escape to the humble countryside outside the city. With its atmospheric shots of old Beijing and its longing for the simpler, slower time when family and love were the truest rewards, it’s like a poem to China—just a very, very long and emotive one.

Watch the trailer for A Beautiful Life.