Women
Scrs: Lai Git, Chiu Kang-chien
Prod Co: Shaw Brothers
Cast: Chow Yun-fat, Cora Miao, Cherie Chung, Elaine Jin
1985 / Colour / D Beta / Cantonese / Chi & Eng subtitles / 91min
Stanley Kwan left TVB at the height of the First Wave in 1979 to hone his craft under Ann Hui, Peter Yung and others. Kwan took the directorial plunge six years later for this film, a feat that positioned him as a cinematic feminist voice. His visual style exhibits control with abandon, and strength with delicacy and grace, capturing female sensibilities – love, hate, jealousy, pleasure and all the emotional upheavals – in fluid, unobtrusive camera movements, offering a stark contrast with the gritty realism that is the signature of the First Wave. Taking a decidedly nonjudgemental approach, he engages the audience in the yearnings for personal freedom against domestic trappings and punctuates it with shades of humour, irony and satire. Even Cherie Chung as the third wheel in the marriage lent a literary air of impossible charm and wisdom.
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