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156 Allan Cameron and Sean CubittIn Infernal Affairs, a sense of ambivalent retrospection surfaces at theend of the film, as Yan’s identity is effectively subsumed by Ming’s(becoming the yin to his yang), a point made all the more clearly by thefact that their endings appear interchangeable. Here, the evil twin wins,but turns out to have a good heart, which is identifiable or interchangeablewith Yan himself, who seems to live on despite the death of the body.Conversely, Ming’s killing of his erstwhile comrade-in-arms may also suggesthis ongoing instinct for self-preservation: it allows him the pretenseof preserving his good conscience while keeping him, ostensibly, on theright side of the law. Unlike Superintendent Wong, who displays a clarityof principle and purpose in this first film of the trilogy, Ming is saved onlyin that he is not discovered. The lie preserved maintains the disjunctureof terminal identity from any measure of reality, where the existence of thereal is the prerequisite of both responsibility and justice.This sense of disjuncture is further heightened by the existence ofan alternative ending for the mainland Chinese version of the film.Here, the filmmakers, without any extra setup, reverse the ending byhaving Ming arrested for his crimes and apparently preserving Yan’s life(he is sitting up with his eyes open exactly as in the Hong Kong ending,but appears to be given a point-of-view shot of Ming being marchedaway). This ending makes a belated attempt to iron out the moral ambiguities,evidently for the benefit of the Chinese authorities. It also servesto anchor the shifting identities of the characters: the “good” Yan survives,while the “evil” Ming is duly caught and punished. Here, then, “one country,two systems” (the Chinese government’s promise that Hong Kongcan remain a semi-autonomous political and economic sphere after thehandover) is paralleled by one country, two endings. Yet the alternativeending’s attempt to stabilize the moral meaning of the film gives rise tothe sense that this is only one among an array of possible endings.Providing the justice which narrative closure demands, it reveals thelack of a sense of justice in the film that precedes it. The fragile andindeterminate status of Hong Kong democracy thus frames the film’smoral ambiguity. In this confusing state of flux, perhaps morality itselfbecomes unrepresentable – subject to the state of “disappearance” thatAckbar Abbas describes as characteristic of Hong Kong culture in the contextof its colonial past and neo-colonial present (1997). The fluidityof the characters thus anticipates the narrational and ethical fluidity ofthe film itself, which becomes chameleonic, adapting itself to its politicalcontext.