David O'ConnellCentre Stage
September 17th 2010 05:05
Stanley Kwan’s Centre Stage is a biopic with a difference. As embodied by the ethereal Maggie Cheung, he explores the troubled career and prematurely ended life of the most famous Asian actress of her time, Ruan Ling-yu. Ruan’s star was on the rise in the final years of silent cinema in early 1930's Shanghai, but against a backdrop of social upheaval and instability - in which the Japanese posed a constant bullying threat - her life fell into despondency once the cameras ceased to roll.
Long before our modern fixation with stardom, the paparazzi of the era were likewise hounding starlets like Ruan for juicy peeks into their private lives. However, a fragility in her psychological make-up - hauntingly glimpsed in some of the few remaining snippets of real footage from her performances – prevented her from coping adequately with fame and all it entailed. An affair with a married man only exacerbated matters during a tumultuous period that ironically – in the light of her eventual fate – culminated in her portraying a character in Cai Chusheng’s New Woman (1935) driven to suicide by lurid media attention.
Only peripherally is this a film about the filmmaking process in a time when the art-form was fresh and vital; as the artistry of Ruan begins to fade into the background, her tragic human tale comes to the fore. Cheung is the film’s saving grace, even as it flounders as drama; magnetically beautiful from any angle, she manages to make us care for Ruan even as her life is told in erratic stanzas that lack comprehension and a direct emotional connection. In a sense, Kwan might accurately be accused of favouring style over substance, yet the sterling work of cinematographer Poon Hang-sang and liberal use of plaintive, emotive music provide moments of undeniable grace and magic.
Maggie
Kwan’s decision to insert meta-filmic moments of contemplation in which he, as director, asks Cheung the actress to contemplate the role, feel extraneous and frivolous. The same is true for the spasmodic interviews with Ruan’s few surviving contemporaries. The brief but unforgettable footage of Ruan herself speaks more than any fleeting rumination on her impact. Here, in these transcendent moments is enough sobering context to capture the poignancy of this woman’s ill-fated tryst with stardom, the burden of which she was ultimately unable to bear.
Sadly this version of the film was not the 147 minute Director’s cut of the film as advertised by Melbourne Cinematheque, but a truncated version missing about 20 minutes. Who knows what difference these absent moments might have made? Ultimately, Centre Stage (1992) does feel somewhat lacking in focus and swamped by stylistic excess. Yet two memorable elements save it from dissolving into mediocrity: the historic footage with its searching, telling glimpses into Ruan’s haunted eyes, and above all, the earth-shattering beauty of the actress who meticulously absorbs Ruan’s wounded spirit, Maggie Cheung.
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Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by David O'Connell
20/20 Filmsight
Screen Fanatic
Please arrange for a contract to be put out on my life if I ever watch and try to review that one mate.
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
I hadn't actually heard of this, so thanks for bringing this to my attention.
An important piece of cinema history revealed by the sounds of it.