You’ll never be confused about who the enemy is in “Women Who Flirt,” Pang Ho-cheung’s new romantic comedy. Hailey (Tang Sui) is the kind of passive-aggressive young woman who talks in a babyish voice to men, reacts to a scratch on her leg as if it might require amputation and bursts into tears at less than the drop of a hat, demanding at higher and higher volume to be consoled. In one restaurant scene, Hailey sobs like a stricken toddler and insists on being taken home after learning that her main course is a rabbit delicacy. (“Girls don’t eat bunnies!” she wails.)
The only reason we care about Hailey is that Marco (Huang Xiaoming) has fallen for her, and Angie (Zhou Xun), Marco’s work colleague and best friend since college, had always kind of planned to marry him herself. Angie — everybody gets Western names in the English subtitles — is beautiful, but Marco can’t see that (“She’s a dude,” he says repeatedly) because she’s a sensible type with short hair and a grown-up job. The plot consists of Angie’s more blatantly sexy female friends’ teaching her how to look and behave like an idiot.