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THE ARTS
JUNE 7, 1999 VOL. 153 NO. 22
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Another post-'97 drama, Lik Wai-yu's Love Will Tear Us Apart, stars Tony Leung Ka-fai as a petty criminal who sells German porno videos. (The videos are German? "At least the dogs in it are," he says.) This pokey but seductive film is indebted to director Wong Kar-wai and his cool, cranky visions of Hong Kong after midnight. Leung, who co-produced the movie, gets points for helping a new director with an elliptical style. "Hong Kong is a very commercial place to make films," he says, "and they're looking for Far East business. They want action, action, action. I was happy to encourage a director who dared to challenge business as usual." But Leung hesitates to lump his film in with the doom-draped dramas from Taiwan and the mainland. "I wouldn't say it's an art film," he notes cagily. "I'll only say it's a movie."
What makes a film a movie? Well, it never hurts to have a beguiling actress. Love Will Tear Us Apart has two mainland charmers: Lu Liping (star of the classic The Blue Kite, here in a sexier role) and luscious novice Wong Ning. Tempting Heart, Sylvia Chang's valentine to the '70s and '80s, has sweet Gigi Leung rubbing up against moody, hunky Takeshi Kaneshiro. In The Personals, director Chen Kuo-fu manages to build an entire, engaging movie around a woman's first (and usually last) meetings with a parade of loser men, but the film would falter without the slow smile of Rene Liu, who illuminates every scene. Each of these films could have been sharper; the actresses could not be more radiant. They prove that the Hong Kong cinema's old knack for sprinkling stardust did not evaporate when Brigitte Lin retired.
And what makes a movie a festival film? Some formal inventiveness, the spark of unpredictable life, an edge of weirdness. You get all that in Away With Words, a first feature by Christopher Doyle, the Australian-born cinematographer of many of the finest Asian films. The film is a gorgeous mess, with Doyle's pixelated superrealist camera style butting heads with--and practically getting knocked out by--a free-form portrait of an alcoholic night crawler (Kevin Sherlock) who screws many more people than he charms. Emotionally exasperating but cinematically rhapsodic, Away With Words is to be seen for Doyle's gift for throwing paint on the celluloid canvas. His visual facility is, in both senses of the word, staggering.
In Cannes, Doyle conceded he'd rather "be in bed with someone in Hong Kong than be here." But he was happy to see the Asian film community's unity at Cannes. "We went through a period when people cared only if their films were recognized. Now we know we have to stick together, or we'll destroy our credibility, our access and our market." Doyle is putting his metier where his mouth is. He has turned down many offers to work with distinguished Western directors in order to shoot Wong Kar-wai's next two films.
Chen Kaige is another commuter between cultures. The first Chinese director to win a Palme d'Or (in 1993, for Farewell My Concubine), he is also the most cosmopolitan of cinéastes. He plans to direct an English-language film for Miramax (from a script by The Silence of the Lambs' Ted Tally), has discussed working with superstar Mel Gibson and is considering a move from Beijing to Los Angeles. Yet he remains as committed to understanding China as he is to finding a bridge to the West.
The Emperor and the Assassin, considerably revised since its Japanese premiere, is a complex tale that instructs and entertains for much of its 158-minute running time. Set in the 3rd century B.C., it tells of the struggle of Ying Zheng (Li Xuejian) to unify China and become its first emperor. His aims are honorable, his methods increasingly brutal. Ying sends his lover Lady Zhao (Gong Li) to her Han homeland, where she finds a professional killer (Zhang Feng-yi, in a potent turn) who will try to put an end to the emperor's dynasty before it ever begins.
The story's metaphorical plangency and its sympathetic depiction of the killer may not win the film powerful friends as China approaches the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square fracas and the golden jubilee of the People's Republic. The film's immersion in ancient history may also befuddle foreigners. But the message is clear, and it reverberates outside Chen's homeland. Chen thinks his film even has echoes in the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. "My film is really about war that starts in the name of peace," he says. "History always reflects what is going on today."
The film has a few missteps and longueurs, but for the most part this is glorious moviemaking, mixing De Mille and Dostoyevsky: the cast-of-thousands splendor of an old Hollywood spectacle and the gnarled psychology of Chen's Temptress Moon. It has a host of attractive actors, notably Wang Zhiwen as a smilingly scheming marquis and Gu Yangfei as a queen mother prone to regal hysteria. And there is one scene that haunts the heart: an ethereally beautiful blind girl kills herself after the assassin has eradicated the rest of her family. Few directors can create such indelible imagery; Chen does it in nearly every frame. His film deserves a wide audience, from beyond Cannes to China itself.
With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Cannes
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