yang yin: gender in chinese cinema

yesterday i decided on a whim to watch this documentary on gender in chinese film. it's directed by stanley kwan, whose work i'm not very familiar with aside from rouge (1990), which i watched last week (it's a great film and i'd recommend it to anyone, though i kinda felt like it was kind of missing a piece or something.. idk. anita mui's performance makes it worth it though). stanley, whose voiceover is narrated by tony rayns, interviews some of the biggest and well-known sino directors at the time (including john woo, tsui hark, chen kaige, ang lee, xie jin, edward yang, hou hsiao-hsien, tsai ming-liang.. whew!) on their views on a variety of gender-related topics, including homoerotic male bonding, father-son relationships, and cross-dressing characters in their films. stanley kwan "came out" as gay for the first time in this film.. he's my new director hero after tsai.

i think this documentary is valuable because you get to hear what all of these big-name directors think about topics that were (/are still) considered taboo for public discussion at the time. stanley's interviewing style is very direct, at times even verging on being presumptuous and leading, but the directors' reactions to his questions are pretty interesting.

i took a lot of stills so i'll put them here! 

the film begins with the topic of homoerotic male bonding and images of hypermasculine naked men in the director chang cheh's films. here's what peggy chiao had to say:

and here's chang cheh's response to claims of homoeroticism in his films:

hmmmmmmmm.. 

john woo is in this, too. when asked about the homoerotic tension in his films like a better tomorrow  and the killer, he responds by saying that it was all unintentional, but that his films don't really "belong" to him after they're released and that people have the right to form their own interpretations of the film. i liked that a lot, since it seems like a lot of directors (*cough* chen kaige) don't seem to have the same approach to their own films. john woo also made this interesting statement on making films that feature strong male bonding in hollywood versus in hong kong:

i wonder what he meant by this. did hollywood producers tell him this? does he mean that american audiences more readily read strong male relationships as gay? hm.

also, my star, my love, my one and only idol is in this too! he has some good moments.

narration: leslie cheung has played more than his fair share of narcissistic characters. i asked if he owns up to being a narcissist in real life. 

leslie: "oh, absolutely!"

hehe!

and here's leslie on why he gets asked to play so many effeminate roles:

"in a delicate way", he says in english. god i love you

next we come to chen kaige. here's him responding to accusations of homophobia in farewell my concubine:

can someone pay for my ticket to china so i can fight chen kaige?? honestly.. how did he manage to make fmc and still be so stubbornly insistent that dieyi is "a man". and the way he asserts that there's a core meaning to the film.. kaige.. let it go

stanley also interviews the three big taiwanese new wave directors - hou, edward, and tsai! their portion focused mainly on their relationships to their fathers. i was a little disappointed because it felt fairly short and i wanted to hear more of their insights. but it was cute nonetheless!

here's tsui hark on brigitte lin playing male roles in films:

leslie on brigitte:

(in english) "sorry. too bad. she's a very good friend of mine, but i have to say."

LMAO so i honestly don't know if his judgment of brigitte is fair since i've only seen her in the bride with white hair and a few wong kar-wai films, but you have to give it to leslie.. he had no qualms about speaking his mind!

yes! tell them, leslie.. he makes such a crucial point. chang cheh said that he essentially wanted to re-masculinize chinese men onscreen; leslie is doing the opposite with the roles he plays in films, and it's scary - femininity in men is still seen as threatening to the heteronormative chinese state. i also think that you can tell that leslie's speaking from a place of personal frustration with having to deal with the horrible insults and rumors about his private life that circulated after farewell my concubine came out. 

he was honestly everything...

some other interviews that i didn't take screenshots of were with ang lee, who comes off as such a nice person (he talks about how he thinks filial piety is flawed and that love should be the important element in parent-child relationships), xie jin (who made red detachment of women and stage sisters), and also his son, xie yan. the independent director zhang yuan is also interviewed, and he speaks briefly about east palace west palace (which i wrote about in my last post!), which he was currently filming at the time. i really want to see more of zhang yuan's films!

at the end of the documentary, stanley interviews his own mother on her views on yam kim-fai, a famous cantonese opera star who was known for playing male leads. yam kim-fai was in a committed relationship with her co-star, bak sheut-shin.

!!!

i really enjoyed this last part of the film because stanley's mother is just so sweet! she also reveals that she's happy for stanley's relationship and it's obvious that she loves him so much. it's wonderful!

anyways those are all the screenshots i had. i'd highly recommend this documentary; i linked to where you can stream it at the top of this post if you're interested in watching!

xoxo c.