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Love on a Diet

2001 film by Johnnie To, Wai Ka-Fai

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ3088054 ↗
Source-derived summary

Love on a Diet (Chinese: 瘦身男女 - literally "Slimming Men and Women") is a 2001 Hong Kong romantic comedy film produced and directed by Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai, starring Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng.

The film reunites Lau and Cheng, who last paired up in 2000's Needing You.... For their roles, both actors play obese characters and had to wear fatsuits with prosthetic makeup.

Plot

Mini Mo (Sammi Cheng) is a Hong Kong resident living in Japan. She has depression, low self-esteem and a binge eating disorder – the result which sees her has extreme obesity. A suicide attempt causes her to meet Fatso (Andy Lau), a Hong Kong salesman working in Japan who is also obese.

Mini sticks with Fatso everywhere, and although initially vexed by Mini, Fatso discovers the reason behind her depression. Mini cannot forget her former boyfriend, Kurokawa, who is now a world-famous pianist. Ten years ago, the two had pledged to meet at the foot of Yokohama Marine Tower on the night of their break-up. Mini is fearful of meeting Kurokawa in her present size.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Love on a Diet” as 2001 film by Johnnie To, Wai Ka-Fai. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Love, Diet and film.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2001, 2000—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2001-01-01. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Love, Diet and film providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Love on a Diet”, the useful work is to connect “2001 film by Johnnie To, Wai Ka-Fai” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3088054. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2001 and 2000.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Love on a Diet”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Love on a Diet primary sources, Love on a Diet archive and Love research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Love on a Diet”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Love on a Diet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.