Film appreciation: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow - a Hong Kong original

An unexpected consequence of Hong Kong's 2003 Sars outbreak was a renewed interest in one of the oddest productions in the city's cinematic history. After nearly three decades of obscurity, director-writer Patrick Lung Kong's 1970 take on French writer-philosopher Albert Camus' The Plague suddenly attained a prescient relevance for its stylised visualisation of a metropolis in panic over a virulent foe.

But that's just one of the factors that make Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow a truly unique film. Part soap opera, part public health announcement, the director's cut was re-edited before release due to perceived political undertones which supposedly invoked the 1967 riots. The shearing resulted in a brief 72-minute feature in which the frenetic pace serves to enhance a lurid conglomeration of vignettes.

The edgy technique, whether by choice or design, intensifies the friction between the scenario's inherent artificiality and the production's unusual amount of location shots. Characters are constantly shot on the move (including in sampans as well as cars and vans), something which was rare at the time. Viewers are given a real sense of Hong Kong as a third-world manufacturing centre transforming into a modern metropolis. Squatter villages and textile mills contrast with more "modern" cityscapes, and sparkling Christmas lights proclaim "Festival of Hong Kong 69". Nostalgically and story-wise, the most evocative setting is the Chatham Road Detention Centre in what is now Tsim Sha Tsui East. Here, some key characters discover that despite the film's title, there is no tomorrow.

Lung intercuts an extravagance of subplots involving a plethora of stars in a series of extended cameos. Among them are a foreign correspondent (Chang Yang); a bubbly factory worker (Nancy Sit Kar-yin); an unusually young Health Department chief (Kenneth Tsang Kong); a dashing TV anchor (Paul Chang Chung); and his unhappy spouse (Tina Ti Na).

Lung's trademark flamboyance is evident from start to finish. Although the histrionic high is achieved by a maniacal plague victim (Chu Kong), there's plenty of brio emanating from the scummy drug addict played by the director.

At the time the film was made, Cantonese pictures were out of favour, and that meant Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow had to use Putonghua dialogue. The jerky voice dubbing adds a jarring note to the authentic atmosphere. But it also adds to the discombobulated nature of the film as a whole.