This movie is available for purchase at www.sensasian.com
Rating:
7.5
AKA: Centre Stage, Actress
Year of release: 1992
Genre: docu-drama
Director: Stanley Kwan
Producers: Leonard Ho, Jackie Chan, Willie Chan, Tsui Siu Ming
Writer: Yau Dai An Ping
Editors: Cheung Yiu Chung, Cheung Kar Fei, Joseph Chiang
Cinematographer: Poon Hang Seng
Music: Siu Chung
Stars: Maggie Cheung, Carina Lau, Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Han Chin, Waise Lee, Lawrence Ng, Cecilia Yip
Rated I; contains brief nudity
DVD Information
Company: Fortune Star
Format: widescreen
Languages: Cantonese, Mandarin
Subtitles: Chinese, English
Extras: trailers, photo galleries, interviews, booklet/poster
Notes: This version restores the footage that was cut from the initial DVD release. The picture/sound is also much better than the first DVD, and the extras are subtitled in English -- overall, this is a very solid DVD.
Related links:
Maggie Cheung biography
Movie Review index
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Center Stage
Center Stage is a docu-drama based on the life of Ruan Ling-Yu, who was the most popular actress of China's silent film era. During her short career, she made twenty-nine films and became an icon of glamour for the entire nation, and Asia as a whole. Despite her success, Ruan was a troubled woman and took her own life in 1935 at the age of twenty-five, when her tulmultuous relationships with the men in her life (and the intense glare of the tabloid press around them) proved to be too much for her to handle.
Director Stanley Kwan takes an unconventional approach to the film. Not only does Center Stage start when Ruan's career has already taken off (eschweing the usual cradle-to-the-grave template most movies of this type use), he uses actual footage from Ruan's films (where they are available -- only about six of her movies remain in any form) as well as interviews with her contemporaries. Kwan goes even further to break the "fourth wall" by having segments where Center Stage's actors (along with Kwan himself) talk about Ruan and how her career relates to modern Hong Kong cinema.
These types of techniques might have come off badly, like self-centered filmic mastrubation, but Kwan manages to hold everything together well, mostly through Maggie Cheung's performance. At this point in Cheung's career, she was herself being lambasted by the Hong Kong tabloid press, and thus manages to bring a lot to her role as Ruan. Additionally, her interview segments come off as honest and genuine, not fake like these "movies-within-a-movie" usually end up feeling to the viewer. It was with this role that Cheung attained international stardom. She became the first Chinese actress to win an award at a major international film festival after she took "best actress" at the 1992 Berlin Film Festival and managed to step outside the pigeonhole of "jade vase" roles she had been put into after appearing as little more than glorified window dressing in movies like Police Story.
Despite Maggie Cheung's masterful performance and the lush mise-en-scene of Center Stage, at the end of the day, it still came off as a bit empty. I just didn't feel like I learned enough about Ruan Ling-Yu. For instance, why did she stay with a series of men who were either cold or downright abusive towards her? Stanley Kwan might have not wanted to outright "speak" for Ruan, but some more insight into her life would have been helpful in bringing home her tragic end, especially for western viewers who probably are not familiar at all with her work. Despite this, Center Stage is a moving picture that proves Hong Kong film-makers are capable of doing more than blowing people up and telling toliet jokes.
