Hong Kong directors are ditching young stars for old veterans who’ve hardly been on screen in twenty years or more, but the real surprise is they’re giving them the best roles
It’s not the sort of thing you’d find in Hollywood. Tinsel town so covets and prizes youth above all else that the whole idea would turn the place on its head. Yet in Hong Kong directors are casting older actors who’ve faces have rarely graced the big screen in decades – not just in cameos, but some of the best roles. It’s nothing new in Asia, where filmmakers have always had a greater respect for their elders. But the frequency with which it happens, and the quality of those appearances, is truly gaining momentum.
For instance, Ang Lee thought he was being very clever casting Cheng Pei-pei as the villainous character Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It made a direct link to the work of the director that Lee’s film so diligently, er, paid homage too, King Hu, as Cheng was the lead in the first wuxia film he made Come Drink With Me. (What Lee failed to realise, of course, was that his action choreographer had done exactly the same some years before, casting her alongside Michelle Yeoh in Wing Chun.)
The film had given Cheng Pei-pei had a brief but commanding position as the leading action lady in the late sixties – before filmmakers realised that cinema audiences were just as happy to watch male leads, and ironically, as the rest of the world became aware of feminist issue’s, women in Hong Kong took a back seat. Her daughter recounts how, as a child growing up in America she was always surprised at the reverence other Chinese adults paid to her mother – she had no idea of her earlier life as a Hong Kong movie star.
Plucked from the verges of obscurity? It pales into comparison with Yuen Qiu. A one-time Bond girl with a minor role in The Man with the Golden Gun, she had hardly appeared on the big screen in nearly twenty years. But when she accompanied a colleague to an audition for actor/director Stephen Chow’s first film after his international success Shaolin Soccer he was rather more interested in her – later stating he cast her because of how she smoked. That film was, of course, was Kung Fu Hustle – a guaranteed success and massive exposure for Qiu, especially as he cast her in one of the lead roles, the landlady of Pig Sty Alley.
The film was also a renaissance for her onscreen husband Yuen Wah. Like Yuen Qiu, Wah was a pupil of Hong Kong’s Chinese Opera School, and one of the Seven Little Fortunes alongside Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao and Jackie Chan. Wah’s career, however, never faired as well as his former classmates. In the 80s and 90s he built a reputation as the ‘magnificent villian’ with mainly anonymous bad guy roles, rarely given the chance to flex his acting (let alone comedy) muscles like on Iceman Cometh. Yet Chow perfectly cast him as the landlord in Kung Fu Hustle, a role which won him Best supporting actor at the 24th Hong Kong Film Awards.
And it’s not just Stephen Chow, other directors are taking full advantage of their antecedents. Johnnie To, for instance, cast Tian-lin Wang in a crucial role in Election. A director with three decades of experience from the 50s, and father of the prolific writer, director and producer Wong Jing, he brought a genuine candidness and humour to the film. To also cast David Chiang as a police inspector, Chiang had once been one of Hong Kong’s biggest stars, when he was director Zhang Che’s actor of choice in the early seventies in films like Vengeance and Blood Brothers.
Then there’s Tsui Hark, who cast Lau Kar-leung (Liu Chia-Liang) as one of the leads in epic gritty wuxia movie Seven Swords. Lau also choreographed the action for the movie – and why not? Kar-leung gained a reputation as one of Hong Kong’s greatest choreographers working on Shaw Brothers films throughout the 60s and 70s, before directing some of the greatest kung fu movies of all time, such as 36th Chamber of Shaolin and Spiritual Boxer.
Of course, though it’s fantastic that Hong Kong filmmakers have definitely not forgotten their predecessors, it belies a more serious situation for cinema there – that few fresh faces, if any, have captured the imagination and support of audiences.
The biggest names, the ones that guarantee box office draw, all come from the ‘golden age’ of HK cinema, many having made the transition from television to the big screen in the mid 80s to 90s. Andy Lau, Tony Leung (Chiu-wai and Ka-fai), Aaron Kwok, Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh, Ekin Cheng, Leon Lai, Eric Tsang – all of them. Even younger actors like Daniel Wu and Shu Qi still debuted in the late 90s.
Few new stars have that same impact, China’s Zhang Ziyi, perhaps Cecilia Cheung, Edison Chen, maybe Angelica Lee, but can you possibly count pop act The Twins? And will Jackie’s son Jaycee Chan break through?
So what does this mean for Hong Kong cinema? Well, while it’s good to see that the older generation have not been forgotten, filmmakers are going to have to find a whole new generation for us to fall in love with, and quick…!
