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3\/5 stars<\/strong><\/p>\n It opens in 2024 Hong Kong, where the Macau-born director Lok (Fish Liew Chi-yu) has been struggling to secure her second project after the early success of her first feature. Despite the emotional support of her live-in partner Bei Bei (Jennifer Yu Heung-ying), a cheerful actress who wants to start a family, Lok appears as conflicted as ever about her life\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n The film then takes us back to 2010 Taipei, where Choi (Elizabeth Tang Tao) is a university student preparing for her graduation project. Although she shows her assertive side on campus by protesting the closure of the city\u2019s legal brothels, she is far less decisive in her own relationship with Kai-ching (Han Ning), her considerate Taiwanese girlfriend, even with the couple\u2019s passionate sex life.<\/p>\n Finally, we are brought to the start of her romantic yearnings, when Yan (Natalie Hsu En-yi), an innocent high-school girl in 2006 Macau, develops a big crush on her classmate\u2019s sister Faye (Eliz Lao Yee-lum), a college fashion major. It is here that we see the roots of some of the protagonist\u2019s key decisions and memories, which manifest years later in subtle but quietly poignant ways.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nMacau filmmaker Tracy Choi Ian-sin revisits the tender, nostalgic tone of her directorial debut, Sisterhood<\/em><\/span> (2016), for this semi-autobiographical lesbian drama. Girlfriends<\/em> charts a young woman\u2019s coming-of-age experience and ongoing quest to find her place in the world through three episodes from separate periods of her life, unfolding in reverse chronological order and under different names.<\/div>\n