CHINESE BOX

CHINESE BOX Jeremy Irons, Gong Li, Maggie Cheung (1998, Trimark, R, $103.99) Set immediately prior to the July 1997 reversion of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule, Wayne Wang’s drippy intercontinental romance serves mostly as a reminder that geopolitical allegory can’t compensate for a trite story. Irons is a journalist dying of leukemia, Gong a former hooker yearning for respectability; the two might as well be wearing enormous placards that read U.K. and PRC as they embark upon a doomed love affair. Didactic and tiresome, it’s less a movie than a thinly disguised tract. C-