Center Stage

A biopic of Chinese silent film actress from the 30's, Ruan Lingyu, with Maggie Cheung as Ruan. This movie tells the sad story of a young woman who is rescued from poverty by show business, and is subsequently destroyed by it. It's a classic story of the patriarchal double standard in which an adulterous woman is punished by society while an adulterous man is not.

Maggie Cheung's performance is quite good. First of all, she pulls off being an actress playing an actress who is very immersed in her work.

Everyone in this movie is exceedingly composed - they speak carefully, and walk perpetually as if on eggshells. No one really comes alive until a scene at a dance hall near the end. But despite all the sugary politeness, Cheung successfully conveys a woman who is being slowly destroyed by her oppressive environment. And there are a couple scenes in which she completely loses it, and it's very affecting to watch.

The movie is very interestingly interspersed with clips from Ruan's movies, documentary footage of Ruan's surviving contemporaries, and the actors' conversations with the director.

The other actors, such as Tony Leung Ka Fai, Carina Lau, and Waise Lee, who are so interesting in other movies, all have little to nothing to do, except to look nice in period costume.

Also interesting is the fact that Carina Lau (who plays fellow actress Lily Li) looks much more like the real Ruan Lingyu than Maggie Cheung does.

Watching this film is a bit like watching a PBS documentary - edifying, educational, but not exactly fun.

The director should not have mixed the drama part and the documentary part, which just made the film a narrative mess. The movie itself and a separate documentary would have made the film much more mature. Of course, most parts of the film are just based on some speculations, and this could simply be added by some inter-titles or voice-overs.

The experience of watching this film in 2006 has been similar to watching Marilyn Monroe in "Don't Bother to Knock" after having seen her later, greater performances. Maggie Cheung's (Garbo-like) capability to release interior emotion that will later haunt viewers in "In the Mood for Love" is beginning to take root in "Yuen Ling-yuk." Later on, Wong Kar Wai was able to use editing to sculpt her performance into consistent, unrelenting intensity. Here she is just beginning to explore the boundaries of her talent. This fits in with director Stanley Kwan's need to create a work in progress, like the productions we watch as they are filmed. He both exploits and denounces the artificial milieu as the actors slip in and out of their roles and the film steps in and out of period. The trial-and-error method of Yuen Ling-yuk is matched by Kwan's letting Cheung find her way through the moods of the character, as if she were trying on a different mask for each moment of the life she is embodying. By 2000 the integration of facial and corporal expressions into dramatic expression would be seamless.

It would be interesting to know which directors saw this film when it was shown on the festival circuit. Did Tim Burton know that he had a Chinese counterpart who also let his affection for a forgotten era in cinema guide the pace (disconcerting for many) of his tribute when he made "Ed Wood" a year later? In 1999 when Benoît Jacquot filmed "La Tosca," did he think of this film for his distancing technique that juxtaposed real singers at a recording session filmed in black-and-white with their operatic characters in colorful period costumes? Perhaps even Scorsese took inspiration for "Aviator" from the 1930s shadowy wood-paneling/glossy brilliantine look that comes much more easily to Kwan.

This film can be placed alongside "Sylvia Scarlett" or "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," wherein young actresses were given the freedom to go beyond what they had done before and reach for what they would do, under the guidance of a director whose search to take the viewer into (then) uncharted waters inspired the performers to deepen their potential.

I saw Stanley Kwan's "Centre Stage" ("Yuen Ling-yuk") at a university series "New East Asian Cinema" on February 27, 2006. The film is a biography of Ruan Ling-yu (1910-1935), a silent film star of Chinese silent films.

The film describes the life and meteoric rise to fame of young Shanghai actor Ruan Ling-yu (played well by Maggie Cheung), who from the age of 16 till her death at age 24, was featured, often in a lead role, in over a dozen films. She was involved in extramarital affairs with two men and eventually the double standards that women suffer by catch up with her (but not with the married suitors), and dogged media slander her reputation. With her honor at stake, she sees no recourse but to commit suicide, and does so with an overdose of barbiturates. According to the wikipedia entry about her (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruan_Ling_Yu), "her funeral procession was reportedly three miles long, with three women committing suicide during it."

The film cleverly goes back and forth in time, and includes excellent interludes from some of Ruan Ling-yu's films. These snippets, as well as the local color we see in 1930s Shanghai, reveal a vivacious setting in Chinese history that I would enjoy learning more about, including seeing some of the period cinema.

Not previously knowing anything about Ruan Ling-yu, I of course cannot vouch for the realism of the portrayal, but the acting of Maggie Cheung revealed a strong, magnetic, kind, talented, determined, and yet slightly aloof woman who enjoys many admirers. The other characters were not nearly as well developed, but that is understandable with the focus being on Ruan Ling-yu.

I wonder if Kwan could have set the stage, so to speak, a bit more economically, and found the first half to two thirds rather slow. But, without giving anything away, the ending (of course we know that suicide is the true history) is calmly dramatic and captivating. The manner in which Cheung shows the actor saying goodbye to her close friends, who don't know that this is in fact her farewell, is touching - I wonder if this is how it happened. A film worth watching and which I would like to see again - 7.5 stars out of 10.

--Dilip Feb. 27, 2006

I'm a novice at Chinese history, especially in the area of periods of film, and, being American, I'm particularly fascinated by it and comparing it to period pieces set in the 1930's US (a la "Cat's Meow" or "Miller's Crossing"). I was particularly taken with Centre Stage's attention to detail in period dress, music, and movie deal-making among the industry. As opposed to American movies focusing of stars/starlets' merciless climb to the top of the industry, Maggie Cheung plays Ruan as a kind, clever, and talented actress whose versatility and assertiveness helps her move beyond pigeonholing by the industry to play a wide range of parts--revolutionary, new woman, peasant-girl.

One part it seems which has been overlooked in the few reviews I've read is how this image of feminism illustrates China's version of liberation. Cheung plays Ruan as both a feminist in charge of her career, as well as a woman who is in control of her scandalous affair with Lawrence Ng's character. The difference between her and him being that men are understood to have concubines and are forgiven for the indecency, while Maggie's career is ruined (though she never apologizes for it in any way). Traditional roles still trump profession in 1930's China, but the sadness of it all being retold shows a strong Ruan overcoming every possible trap--losing a career over an affair, especially--and maintaining her desires for success.

For Cheung's performance, it never wavered. I was a big fan of hers in "Irma Vep" and she was just a strong in this role playing Ruan. Effortless shifts between emotion ("So, you're showing me your true face," her lover says as she blows smoke in his face obstinately, then switches to a kindly-wife smile--is she practicing her role in the movie, or is that really her?), graceful poise courtesy of the era before slouching was cool, private display of emotion, and elegant role-play as mistress and ex-wife with Tony Leung.

I'd have to know more about the history of Ruan to know if this is an accurate portrayal of her life, but the film-making style of inter-cutting Cheung playing her in the 30's while interviews with Ruan's colleagues from that time as they are interviewed by the director of the movie is a fascinating way to present her history. Is it a bio-pic? Is it a historical fiction? Is it a retrospective? It's all and more.