It won a special award at the Berlin International Film Festival, it saved the street on which it was shot from demolition, it heralds a return to filmmaking for 80's New Wave filmmaker, Alex Law, and it won Simon Yam his first “Best Actor” trophy at the Hong Kong Film Awards. And that's as it should be, because Echoes of the Rainbow is the Hong Kong movie in excelsis, a celebration of the city and its film industry and of the scrappy, no-nonsense, deeply nostalgic but ridiculously hardheaded working class people who turned Hong Kong from a fishing village into one of the world's great metropolises through sheer hard work.

It's the late Sixties and Big Ears (Buzz Chung) is a kid, running through the streets of Sham Shui Po with a fishbowl on his head pretending to be an astronaut. His big brother, Desmond (Aarif Lee), is a track star who plays guitar and moons over cutie pie, Flora. Their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Law (Simon Yam and Sandra Ng), work their fingers to the bone running a tiny neighborhood shoe store down the street from Mr. Law's brother. Their dream is simple: all they want is for their children to have a better life than they did. But the sunny tone soon darkens into shadow as the Laws become the victims of social upheaval, sickness, money problems, a slumping economy, the rising cost of living and even Hong Kong's annual typhoons.

Based on director Law's childhood, this is a throwback to the Cantonese tearjerkers of the 1950's that manages to be sentimental without becoming maudlin. Echoes of the Rainbow is a movie for everyone who is tired of the cheap irony and tired cynicism that infects the movies these days. Like the stressed-out shoemaker Simon Yam plays in this flick, Echoes of the Rainbow earns your tears honestly, through nothing more than hard work and exquisite craftsmanship.