Original Title: Kong bu fen zi 恐怖份子
Year: 1986
Country: Taiwan
Language: Mandarin
Genre: Drama, Crime
Director: Edward Yang 杨德昌
Screenwriters: Edward Yang 杨德昌, Hsiao-Yeh 小野
Music: Weng Xiao-Liang
Cinematography: Chang Chan 张展
Editor: Liao Ching-Sung 廖庆松
Cast:
Cora Miao 缪骞人
Lee Li-Chun 李立群
Wang An 王安
Ma Shao-Jun 马邵君
King Shih-Chieh 金士杰
Ku Pao-Ming 顾宝明
Liu Ming 刘明
Yu An-Shun 游安顺
Huang Chia-Ching 黄嘉晴
Rating: 8.0/10
Original Title: Gun gun hong chen 滚滚红尘
Year: 1990
Country: Hong Kong, Taiwan
Language: Mandarin, Cantonese
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Director: Yim Ho 严浩
Screenwriters: Yim Ho 严浩, Sanmao 三毛
Based on the novel by Sanmao 三毛
Music: Gerald Shih 史撷咏
Cinematography: Poon Hang-Sang 潘恒生
Editor: Sammy Chow 邹长根
Cast:
Brigitte Lin 林青霞
Chin Han 秦汉
Maggie Cheung 张曼玉
Richard Ng 吴耀汉
Josephine Koo 顾美华
Zhang Yuan 张圆
Yim Ho 严浩
Li Xiaoli 李小力
Rating: 7.0/10
Two pan-Chinese films, THE TERRORIZERS is the third feature of Edward Yang, the prominent figure from the pantheon of New Taiwanese Cinema, and 34 years later, RED DUST still endures as a high point of Hong Kong New Wave director Yim Ho’s track record.
At that stage of his career, Yang’s scripts begin to eschew linearity and at first blush, the interconnections among the characters in THE TERRORIZERS are not clear. Audience is impelled to focus on the three-pronged happenings and actions to get the gist of the whole picture. As per Yang’s predispositions, the 1980s city life is under the pervasive pall of ennui, depression, malaise and anomie.
Novelist Yu-fen (Miao) is bedeviled by a writer’s block and cannot abide by a life of mundane repetitions, whereas her husband Li-zhong (Lee), a hospital doctor who is not above selling others down the river for preferment, is exactly the type that feels content in conformity. Their 7-year marriage is already on the rocks even before Yu-fen’s old flame Wei-bin (Chin) lures her back to his employment, and before soon, his bed.
After being at the receiving end of a prank call from a young girl Shu-an (Wang), Yu-fen finally nerves herself up to terminate her marriage which upsets Li-zhong tremendously, who isn’t really suss that what they have is an ill-sorted love match. Meantime, Shu-an, a neglected child of an absent American GI and a Taiwanese woman (speaking volumes of that specific era in Taiwan’s history), is a petty criminal, often plays badger game with her boyfriend, a local tearaway, and unwittingly becomes the obsession of a young photographer (Ma), whose cohabitation with his bookworm girlfriend (Huang) also feels stuck in a rut.
All seems to lead to the ineluctable violence that is foreshadowed in Yu-fen’s finished novel, as Li-zhong receives the double whammy of a dissolved marriage and a dashed promotion. In the coda, he appears to become a terrorizer by taking the matters into his own hands, exacting vengeance for his wounded pride. A headshot to his superior, he spares Yu-fen, but not Wei-bin, and intimidates Shu-an. However, it is really not Yang’s méétier to harm women, the revelation of Li-zhong’s drastic denouement is pregnant with Yang’s sober deliberation on modern society’s maladies, a theme spanning through all his films.
In THE TERRORIZERS, on the strength of two affecting performances from Cora Miao and Lee Li-Qun – she is tremendously evocative of Yu-fen’s warped reality and faux-sense of liberation while he aptly modulates Li-zhong’s ordinary-Joe meticulousness and soft-spoken civility with an about-face near the end that is particularly unsettling – Yang’s multi-threaded narratology, measured compositional syntax, and understated color schemes, all gel into a more stimulating puzzle that alluringly invites an audience who has patience to spare, to dive into the characters’s psyches with astonishing veracity, probity and aplomb, through apropos of Yang’s mastery, the best is yet to come…
If THE TERRORIZERS feels like a piercing lancet dissecting the symptoms of a disaffected lifeworld, Yim Ho’s RED DUST approximates to a feverish dream of haphazard editing, slapdash Dutch angels and a disjointed narrative. Based on name Taiwanese author Sanmao’s novel (its story is inspired by the romance between novelist Eileen Chang and her first husband Hu Lan-cheng), who is also the co-scenarist, the film stars Brigitte Lin and Chin Han (the golden screen lovebirds of Taiwan cinema from 1970s, who were also an item off screen at then) as a pair of star-crossed lovers.
Shao-hua (Lin) is a writer during China’s Japanese Occupation period (1937-1945), hopelessly falls under the spell of Neng-chai(Chin), a Chinese functionary working for the Japanese army, who is considered as a “quisling” by Chinese resistance fighters. Dictated by Saomao’s defiant spirits, Shao-hua has no qualms about falling in love with a man like Neng-chai, and will go to extreme lengths to help him escape retribution after Japan’s surrender and during the ensuing Chinese civil war. All lead to their eventual adieu, where Shao-hua leaves him the only ship ticket to Taiwan while she remains in the mainland. Separated by the gulf, Shao-hua eventually perishes during the Cultural Revolution, and decades later, after China’s “open-gate” policy, Neng-chai finally returns to his homeland, only to be bequeathed with a copy of Shao-hua’s novel.
Although the film’s diegesis is noticeably fragmented with blunt tonal-shifts, its background settings look unmistakably trashy, a common demerit of Hong Kong cinema at then due to the market’s booming demand and the industry’s rapid turnout on the assembly line, RED DUST boasts a terrific Brigitte Lin in her most versatile. Shao-hua is a creature of romance and irrationality, endowed with a childlike innocuousness that mellows into a dignified sophistication. Yet, her backbone is firmest when she feels mistreated by Neng-chai (Chin Han’s urbanity and soulful gazes make him more sympathetic than usual), her love is so pure and unconditional that it is destructive. In the end, Lin unleashes Shao-hua’s great sacrifice with such poignancy in the commendably orchestrated departure ruckus, the film finally crowns her Best Actress honor at Golden Horse Awards. In fact, RED DUST is nominated for 12 categories (still a record!) and ends up winning 8, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Maggie Cheung also nabs a Best Supporting Actress for portraying Yue-feng, Shao-hua’s best friend. Their sisterly rapport roundly overmatches the mushy heterosexual romance in the centre (which is the film’s major defect, if not for Lin and Chin’s star power, audience can hardly buy their love story), as Cheung and Lin are simply delectable together, whether bantering about or pouring out their heartfelt feelings. They would collaborate again to an even more stunning effect in Raymond Lee’s martial art spectacle DRAGON INN (1992).
However, RED DUST’s overwhelming success in Taiwan isn’t parlayed into another victory at Yim’s home turf, receiving 9 nominations at Hong Kong Film Awards (with Lin mysteriously snubbed), the film goes home with a big goose egg. But the silver lining is that, the film actually brings Lin to Hong Kong cinema, which would unexpectedly lead her to a second peak in the martial art genre, often in cross-dressing, but that is a totally different story!
referential entries: Edward Yang’s TAIPEI STORY (1985, 7.3/10), THE DAY, ON THE BEACH (1983, 7.4/10); Stan Lai’s SECRET LOVE IN PEACH BLOSSOM LAND (1992, 7.4/10); Peter Chan’s COMRADES: ALMOST A LOVE STORY (1996, 8.2/10).
Cinema Omnivore 