Don’t even think about seeing “Lost Indulgence” if you can’t stand slow movies. It’s a claustrophobic and languorous meditation on life, lies and loss.

The story follows a mother and son as they struggle to redefine their lives after the father’s taxi plunges into the Yangtze, killing him and crippling the passenger, his mistress. Mourning wife Li (Jiang Wenli) offers to take care of the mistress, Sudan (Karen Mok), and asks her to move in with her and her adolescent son Xiaochuan (Tan Jian-ci).

As the three spend more time together in the crowded confines of their flat, their relationships start to evolve. The women strike up a friendship and the mistress begins to treat the boy like a younger brother, who meanwhile develops a crush on the artlessly sexual visitor. The teen’s feelings sound the horn for the conscientious mother, who then succumbs to the advances of a younger man (Eason Chan).

Director Zhang sets the film in his hometown of Chongqing - picturesque in a nightmarish way with imposing concrete towers and constant smoke billowing from factory chimneys. Scenes are set in scrap yards, derelict lands beside the primal Yangtze, and apartment blocks with congested shared corridors and kitchens.

Zhang captures the stuffy Sichuan summer and Chongqing’s chaotic charm by juxtaposing its drab, gray fugliness against Mok’s beautiful legs in multicolored stockings and fishnets. Abasiophiles (the extraordinary few with a psychosexual attraction to those with impaired mobility) certainly won’t want to miss the actress in a monstrous orthopedic leg brace for more than an hour.

4 Stars by Johannes Pong.

Directed by Zhang Yi Bai. Starring Karen Mok, Jiang Wenli, Tan Jian-ci, Eason Chan, Eric Tsang. Category IIA, 101 minutes.