Most people hear the name Johnnie To and immediately think of bullet-riddled suits, slow-motion standoffs and the cool-as-ice nihilism. But he can direct a gritty triad war in his sleep and then turn around and break your heart with a melodrama.

Louis Koo (Throw Down) stars as Michael, a Hong Kong megastar who has everything until he gets dumped at the altar in front of a stadium full of fans. It’s a public execution of his ego. Naturally, he does what any self-respecting icon would do: he goes on a world-class bender that ends with him passed out in the high-altitude forests of Yunnan.

He’s found by Sue (Sammi Cheng), a woman who runs a lonely guesthouse and has her own baggage. Her husband vanished into those same woods years ago, and she’s been living in a state of frozen grief ever since. As Sue nurses Michael back to health and sobriety, the movie shifts from a star-is-born setup into a deeply felt meditation on how we use stories to survive. It turns out their lives were intertwined long before they met in the mud. As Michael sobers up, he remembers that Sue was an early member of his fan club, and that he was the reason she and her husband met.

This isn’t just a romance; it’s Johnnie To’s love letter to cinema itself. There’s a movie-within-a-movie subplot here that explores how films help us process the pain that reality makes unbearable. It’s meta, it’s emotional and it features Sammi Cheng and Louis Koo, the golden couple of HK cinema.

The Radiance Films Blu-ray of Romancing In Thin Air has extras such as a newly recorded interview with screenwriter Ryker Chan; audio commentary by Hong Kong cinema expert Dylan Cheung; a visual essay on Johnnie To’s romantic melodramas by Sean Gilman; making-of and behind-the-scenes footage; a trailer; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow; a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Jake Cole and archival writing by David Bordwell and it is presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings. You can get it from MVD.