CINEVUE: Recently China’s top movie star, Ziyi Zhang, has starred in two distinct Chinese-language films that both opened in US theaters. These two films, THE GRANDMASTER and MY LUCKY STAR, seem to differ in all possible aspects: genre, style, marketing strategy and domestic/overseas reception. Yet the different strands these two films take, namely the established art-house and the nouveau riche chick flick, also nestle inside what can easily be described as the “mainstream” in Chinese cinema today. CineVue invited Bo An, who is currently a second-year M.A. candidate in NYU Cinema Studies program, to analyze what the current state of Chinese film industry is like with these two films as an entry point.
DIAMOND IN THE SKY – CHINA’S NEW WAVE
by Bo An
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hEYKG6AgbQ
Trailer of THE GRANDMASTER (2013)
For those ardent fans of China’s top movie star Zhang Ziyi (章子怡), 2013 is undoubtedly a remarkable year. Two films in which she stars, MY LUCKY STAR (非常幸运) and THE GRANDMASTER (一代宗师), are currently showing in American movie theaters. Zhang plays two totally distinct roles in these movies. In MY LUCKY STAR, she portrays an unsuccessful comic book writer and illustrator, Sophie (苏菲), who is originally presented as a “big silly chick”(大傻妞). Later, Sophie gets involved in an international mission to retrieve a huge diamond, and gains self-respect at the end of the film by winning over the love of a dashing master spy played by Lee-Hom Wang (王力宏). In THE GRANDMASTER, Zhang plays Gong Er (宫二), a serious Kung Fu contender who sacrifices her love for Ip Man (叶问) and never marries in order to carry her father’s legacy and get revenge on the man who killed him. These two movies differ in genre, style, distribution and box office performance in the North American market. They typify two different generations of Chinese cinema which have been seen by a broader international market, and picture the current landscape of the Chinese film market.
THE GRANDMASTER, as an exemplar of the previous generation of Chinese cinema, is helmed by Wong Kar-wai, one of the most well known and respected Hong Kong directors. His representative works include IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (花样年华) (2000) and ASHES OF TIME (东邪西毒) (1994). Carrying on the auteur’s signature styles that have appeared in those movies, THE GRANDMASTER is a film of visual poetry which recounts the legendary life of charismatic Kung Fu master Yip Man in a turbulent China, with hypnotically delicate and emotionally resonant visual effects. The movie assembles many oriental elements that have already been well marketed in the US for decades, with a familiar genre (Martial Arts), a famous hero (Yip Man, who trained Bruce Lee), a big-name director (Wong Kar-wai), and his critically praised serious aesthetic style. Having all these elements to make the movie an exemplar of an accepted image of Chinese movies, it is only logical for THE GRANDMASTER to find the reputable distributors Annapurna Pictures and The Weinstein Company for the North American market, and harvest quite successful receptions from both the critics and the industry in comparison with other Chinese movies shown in the US. The film has screened in at least 804 theaters in the US, and has already hit 6.59 million in the box office here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jAJ_ZQH0Xk
Trailer of MY LUCKY STAR (2013)
MY LUCKY STAR, on the other hand, is a representative work of a new generation of Chinese cinema, as Variety calls it – China’s New Wave. Usually the narratives of these movies follow closely the developments and social discourses of China in the past 30 years, and they tend to tell the stories of ordinary individuals instead of significant public figures. They also present a radical shift of genre from serious dramas and historical epics to romantic comedies and horrors. As a Chinese chick flick, MY LUCKY STAR possesses many elements that celebrate the growing new female audiences who live in urban China, who are well educated, sophisticated and independent. All female characters in the movie, except for the leading lady Sophie, are consumers of globally known luxury brands, living materialistic lives and are powerful enough to choose their own men. Although Sophie initially struggles to fit in, she is nevertheless meant to become like her girlfriends eventually. The plot arc resembles very much that of a classic restorative Hollywood romantic comedy.
The wave of Chinese chick flicks began in 2009, when Eva Jin’s SOPHIE’S REVENGE (非常完美), starring A-list Chinese actresses Ziyi Zhang and Bingbing Fan (范冰冰), was released in Mainland China. After SOPHIE’S REVENGE (to which MY LUCKY STAR counts as a quasi-sequel, as the heroine’s name remains the same), the sub-genre has been further developed by more Mainland China productions such as LOVE IS NOT BLIND (失恋33天) (2011), A WEDDING INVITATION (分手合约) (2013) and ONE NIGHT SURPRISE（一夜惊喜） (2013). While they all performed quite well at the box office in Mainland China, the marketability of Chinese chick flicks in the U.S. is still limited due to the different expectations of Western audiences and the fledging sub-genre’s crudenesses in the technical execution and storytelling strategy. LOVE IS NOT BLIND and ONE NIGHT SURPRISE did not get released in the US at all, and A WEDDING INVITATION was screened in only 3 theaters. MY LUCKY STAR, even with the international influence of Ziyi Zhang and the marketing gimmick that touted it as “the first Mainland China movie helmed by a female American director”, hit only 23 theaters. Since culture differences cannot be easily reconciled in the short term, the popularity of most Chinese chick flicks will remain bound to the domestic audience in mainland China in the foreseeable future.
With the unprecedented and shocking box office success of LOST IN THAILAND (泰囧) at the end of 2012 in Mainland China, the potential of the Chinese film market has become a frequent topic of discussion among both Chinese film companies and Hollywood studios. Yet the question is what kind of productions are contributing to this quickly booming multi-billion dollar business. The big-budget co-production auteurist films which perform strongly in the international market represent the highest quality of Chinese cinema narratively and formally. But when it comes to what type of film will satisfy the market demand for quantity, that is to fill the bills of the emerging 20,000 screens in Mainland China theaters and the moviegoer’s demand for a continuous release of movies on a regular basis, I’m afraid the answer has to be the new generation of Chinese popular cinema, the China’s New Wave. They say nothing is new under the sun, that the similar circumstance has also existed in the American film business all the time. After all, it was not only prestigious films like GONE WITH THE WIND and GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS that made the year 1939 Hollywood’s Best Year, nor could any classics like THE GRADUATE (1967), GODFATHER (1972) or MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969) alone claim that it single-handedly made Hollywood’s last golden age.
Bo An is currently an MA Candidate in Cinema Studies in Tisch School of the Arts of New York University. She is also a member of China Hollywood Society and China-US Filmmaker Guild. After graduation from the Communication University of China, Bo worked for two years in Beijing in fields of art, television and commercial before she came to New York. During her study here she became specifically interested in the musical, Hollywood studio system and Chinese-American co-production. Bo is also a dancer and dance video maker. She worked with LDTX contemporary dance company in Beijing and currently is a dancer and choreographer in Asian Fusion Dance group at New York University.