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LESLIE'S DEMONS
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Whatever medium he works in, Cheung exhibits a high degree of professionalism, and demands a high degree of control. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle tells an anecdote from Wong Kar-wai's Days of Being Wild (1990). Doyle was behind the camera as Cheung prepared to drive an automobile straight toward it, stopping just before the fender struck the camera tripod. Cheung assured Doyle that he could stop in time, but Doyle was worried about the gravel on the road. Cheung did stop the car just before striking the tripod, but as Doyle put it, "I had already bailed. Leslie flew out of the car in a rage and got in my face, demanding to know why I hadn't trusted him to stop the car in time. That's just the way he is."
| Cheung's smooth good looks and soft, sensual eyes prompted one Stateside reviewer to dub him the "Chinese Johnny Depp." |
Leslie Cheung's break into the upper ranks of HK movie-making came with John Woo's seminal film A Better Tomorrow (1986). This film is better known for the launching of Chow Yun Fat, the star of later Woo efforts and much more. ABT was undeniably Chow's vehicle (so much so that he reappeared as his own identical-twin-brother in ABT2). But Woo's decision to cast Leslie--a fresh-faced star better known for romantic dramas and Canto-pop--opposite Chow and Shaw Brothers veteran Ti Lung, was a bold gamble that paid off. Cheung's smooth good looks and soft, sensual eyes prompted one Stateside reviewer to dub him the "Chinese Johnny Depp."
Film critic Chuck Stephens caught it best: "The defining urban thriller of 80's Hong Kong cinema, ...more than just a hyper-stylish, emotionally overwhelming recreation of Coppola's The Godfather, Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and your choice of Japanese yakuza flicks, it's the film that put director John Woo and star Chow Yun Fat (HK's Scorsese and DeNiro) on the map. Good-natured horseplay gives way to brooding nostalgia, followed by heartfelt melodrama, then a big fight scene. Never before had the underworld life of the triads been so lovingly rendered in scenes of slow motion mythologizing and bullet-riddled elegiacs (not to mention shrill sentimentality)."
Cheung's stature skyrocketed with ABT. Woo reported that audiences left movie theaters in tears after viewing his celluloid opera of loyalty and betrayal and modern Chinese knights with pistol-driven panache. ABT busted HK box-office records, garnered an armful of trophies at the Hong Kong Film Awards and ensured megastardom for the valiant Chow Yun Fat.
But for many who saw ABT, the visceral bombast outlined the baby-faced cat in the middle of the melee. As Yoshimoto put it: "In Japan, our impression of Hong Kong film was defined by Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and kyonshi (Chinese child-vampires popular in HK horror-comedies). Leslie Cheung, in John Woo's A Better Tomorrow, changed all that. For the Japanese audience, it was our first opportunity to see a film with such a visionary sweep. Both Chow Yun Fat and Leslie left an indelible mark on Japanese filmgoers."
Cheung's next role was in Tsui Hark's A Chinese Ghost Story (1987). A film that haunts its viewers, this saga of ghostly romance featured Cheung as a traveling tax collector who falls for a winsome beauty (Taiwanese stunner Joey Wong) inhabiting a ghostly pavilion. His ethereal lover has a hefty skeleton in her closet--she's actually been dead for decades, and her manifestation is spiritual in nature (though earthly enough for their mutual passion to ignite onscreen). Worse, she's enslaved to a hideous tree-witch with a fifty-foot tongue!
Outlandish monsters and beguiling ghostresses are standard fare in HK flicks. But, in ACGS, the usual hyperactive pacing of HK supernatural shenanigans was curtailed, as Tsui adapted a lush style and stately pace to frame his story of love, swordplay and enormous flying tongues. The result was a film that effectively bridged the gap between West and East, and is still a one-shot conversion for HK-skeptic pals.
HK's most famous art-film director, Wong Kar-wai, cast Cheung as the lead in his evocative Days Of Being Wild (1990), a wildly different HK fable set in the swinging sixties. DOBW featured Jacky Cheung, Carina Lau, Maggie Cheung and Andy Lau in a well-steamed tale of longing and desire which veers from HK to the Philippines. Leslie's sullen teddy boy was at his most memorable when doing the cha-cha in sparkling-white underwear, admiring his reflection in the mirror, reverberating the audience's admiration. If bald-faced narcissism is ever justifiable, LC in his skivvies doing the cha-cha in WKW's DOBW is that single instance. His character is a bullying cad, and his self-admiration skates on the edge of self-loathing. Yet, the man is so silky-smooth-locomoting panther-sexy in supercute, advertisement-clean undies-that you can't help but admire it all.
His reflection seems to have told Cheung that his music career needed an overhaul, as, around the time of DOBW, he abruptly announced that he was abandoning his singing career and planning to emigrate to Canada. The decision was mystifying, as Leslie was wildly popular as a singer at the time. Exhaustion? Publicity stunt? Premonition? Only the man in the mirror knows for sure.
We do know that Cheung won the Best Actor award at the 1990 Hong Kong Film Awards for Days Of Being Wild. Seven years later, it was another Leslie project that helped rocket Wong Kar-wai's career to its current dizzy heights, as Wong received the coveted Palme d'Or for Best Director at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. The film, Happy Together, featured Leslie and HK stalwart Tony Leung Chiu-wai as a gay couple in Buenos Aires struggling for a happy existence, symbolized by a proposed visit to a legendary waterfall. Again, Cheung plays the cad, deserting the more prosaic Leung time and again, only to return, knuckles bloodied in unseen passion-spats with anonymous lovers. Although explicitly gay-themed, the human frailties exposed in Happy Together translated across all audiences, and the film was hailed in Wong's native Hong Kong as well as the usual art-film hotspots. Although Cheung's role as the cuter, bitchier half of the duo was pivotal, it paled beside Tony Leung's visceral, masterful performance as the scorned lunk who's not only unable to articulate his misery, but can't even get the goobers at the local pizza parlor to hand over the correct pie.
Leslie looks great as a Redhead, but the darker, modified "Bouffon" is far less "obvious". Mother of Pearl sunglasses camp him up a bit...in high-heels he walks like a trick-tired whore. Make-up looks pasty: weekend-cross-dresser-hides-stubble fake. We like the ensemble.Doyle's words are accompanied by stunning photographs of Cheung a la mode du femme, whose publication caused a bit of controversy (typically, one shot depicts Leslie in the middle of a hair-tease, fervently concentrating on his reflection). While appearing in drag is nothing special for Hong Kong actors (check out Jackie Chan in Project S (1993), for starters), rumors swirl around the unmarried Cheung's personal orientation. PAGE 3
--Chris Doyle, Don't Try for Me Argentina (a journal account of the filming of Happy Together)
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