Center Stage (4K Restored Director's Cut)

Dir: Stanley Kwan
Scr: Chiu Kang-chien
Prod Cos: Golden Harvest, Golden Way
Cast: Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Chin Han, Carina Lau Ka-ling, Lawrence Ng Kai-wah
1992 | Colour | DCP | Mandarin, Cantonese & Shanghainese | Chi & Eng Subtitles | 155min

Center Stage, the film that won Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival, retraces the life of 1930s Shanghai silent cinema diva Ruan Lingyu. It would be fair to say Ruan was a victim of society. Having struggled in despair with marriage and love, Ruan finally chose to take her own life at the peak of her career. Director Stanley Kwan boldly breaks the fourth wall to create a dialogue across time and space, intercutting the main narrative with black-and-white footage of Ruan’s works, his own interviews with the cast members and behind-the-scenes footage of the film itself. Art director Pan Lai, on the other hand, takes inspiration from Swiss-German painter Paul Klee and applies Klee’s expressive use of colour in the design of Cheung’s qipao costumes, making it almost impossible for the audience to take their eyes off the actress. Lai further borrows from the techniques of printmaking and uses sharp contour lines to shape Cheung’s qipaos (and even her eyebrows) just so to make Cheung/Ruan evermore memorable.

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