Maggie Cheung inspires a passionate – almost monastic – love and fascination in her devoted worldwide fanbase. Her fanbase has maintained itself for over three decades, even with her deciding not to work as much in the last 20 years. It’s one hell of a fan base, in other words. After working nonstop through the 80s and 90s, she slowed down in the late 90s, and has only appeared in a handful of films since 2004. She says she wants to do other things. She wants to move on, move forward. One can’t blame her. But when she DOES appear in something, it receives FEVERISH attention. Retrospectives are devoted to her career. She’s only 56 years old!!
When she was 18, 19, she was a runner-up in the Miss Hong Kong beauty pageant. This launched her career. Well, sort of. Becoming one of the biggest most revered international movie stars is not the common path for beauty queens. Based on her beginnings, nobody could have predicted Cheung’s eventual career. She was a presenter, a pretty face who announced things, on television. No acting required. She made her film debut in 1984, and didn’t get much attention, but Jackie Chan noticed. He cast her as his girlfriend in Police Story (1985). The movie was a smash-hit and she became an overnight sensation. There was a Julia-Roberts-esque trajectory to her fame: In one moment, she wasn’t a “player” and then suddenly in the next moment, she WAS, and everything changed. The industry quickly made room for this brand-new HUGE star.
There are so many films and overall I’ve seen just a handful. At first, she was cast mostly in comedies. In 1988, she worked with the great Wong Kar Wai for the first time in As Tears Go By…
…and she would work with him again and again (most memorably in In the Mood for Love, a moody tone-poem masterpiece, where Cheung and Tony Leung play people whose spouses are having an affair, and this bonding experience draws them closer and closer together. (A long time ago, I wrote about how In the Mood for Love – a story told through love songs, all the standards – was shot from the perspective of the radio – all my screengrabs were lost in one of the various blog upgrades I’ve done, but I still really like that piece so I’ll share it.)
In the Mood for Love is such a heartbreaker.
It was her collaboration with Olivier Assayas in Irma Vep (1996) that made Cheung’s stardom go global. Asia had been in love with her for 10 years and now everybody knew the secret.
I’ve never written about Cheung, outside of that piece about In the Mood for Love, so I jumped to do so last year when the Metrograph hosted a long- LONG-overdue restoration of Stanley Kwan’s 1991 masterpiece – yes, another masterpiece – Center Stage. (It has also been known by the title Actress). I saw Center Stage a couple of years after it came out, perhaps it was its first release stateside, I can’t remember. My friend Ted and I ventured out on a rainy night to the Music Box (in Chicago), to see a film we didn’t know much about. Maybe we read a good review. I can’t remember. My friend Ted and I still talk about that night, about our experience seeing Center Stage. At the time, we were so stunned by the experience we could barely speak.
Cheung, “Center Stage”
We went out for something to eat afterwards, because we couldn’t just go HOME after the movie, and we sat there, as the rain poured down outside, and talked and talked and talked, re-living every moment. We loved how the movie was ABOUT movies, and not only that it was ABOUT the creative process, about ACTING, our shared passion – it’s how we met – and how this one real-life actress – Ruan Lingyu, referred to as “the Chinese Greta Garbo” – broke free of typecasting, and lobbied to get better roles for herself. Ruan Lingyu’s many personal problems sank her career, and she committed suicide at the age of 25. Center Stage – and Kwan – pays tribute, resurrecting this famous figure from the silent era, not only interested in her scandals, but what she meant to the birth of Chinese cinema.
Cheung, “Center Stage”
Years passed. Ted and I never forgot that film. And it’s a good thing because for decades it was unavailable. You couldn’t rent it. It was near impossible to find. There were versions out there with alternate titles (Actress) and maybe you could get a bootleg, but it wouldn’t have English subtitles. It was one of those Holy Grail “ghost films”. I hoped I would get to see it again one day.
Cheung, “Center Stage”
Over the years, in my writing, I have used Center Stage as a reference point for other biopics. For me, it is THE biopic.
All of this is to say: I finally was able to watch Center Stage when it was restored and re-released. WHAT A THRILL. And I wrote about Center Stage for Ebert. Please see the film! It’s as amazing as I remembered.
Happy birthday, Maggie Cheung. The word “icon” is overused. With Cheung, it fits.
