Olivia Khoo
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622098794
- eISBN:
- 9789882207516
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622098794.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter examines how the movements of the fold can be translated and further understood through the movement of Chinese screen actresses, from the Asian film industry into that of the West. It ...
More
This chapter examines how the movements of the fold can be translated and further understood through the movement of Chinese screen actresses, from the Asian film industry into that of the West. It focuses on how two popular Hong Kong film stars, Maggie Cheung and Michelle Yeoh, have translated or “crossed over” from Hong Kong cinema into the institutional sites of French art house cinema (Cheung in Olivier Assayas's Irma Vep), and Hollywood (Yeoh in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies). The chapter also explains how the figures of the spy, vamp, and woman warrior, particularly as introduced by Yeoh and Cheung through their cross-over roles, characterize diasporic Chinese femininity.Less
This chapter examines how the movements of the fold can be translated and further understood through the movement of Chinese screen actresses, from the Asian film industry into that of the West. It focuses on how two popular Hong Kong film stars, Maggie Cheung and Michelle Yeoh, have translated or “crossed over” from Hong Kong cinema into the institutional sites of French art house cinema (Cheung in Olivier Assayas's Irma Vep), and Hollywood (Yeoh in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies). The chapter also explains how the figures of the spy, vamp, and woman warrior, particularly as introduced by Yeoh and Cheung through their cross-over roles, characterize diasporic Chinese femininity.
Tyler Parks
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474451406
- eISBN:
- 9781474495332
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474451406.003.0016
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter deals with three sequences from Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love that endow two pairs of footwear with pronounced expressive and symbolic dimensions. Ultimately, it contends that a ...
More
This chapter deals with three sequences from Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love that endow two pairs of footwear with pronounced expressive and symbolic dimensions. Ultimately, it contends that a focus on these sequences helps to bring out both the film’s engagement an uncertainty that arose in the midst of waning moral values in 1960s Hong Kong, as well as Wong’s signature philosophical - and more “universal” – emphasis on a distinctive vertigo of time and memory. Footwear in the film functions as expressive of the conflict between desire and decorum, but it also reveals the instability of our grasp of the challenges posed by the film to spectatorial orientation.Less
This chapter deals with three sequences from Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love that endow two pairs of footwear with pronounced expressive and symbolic dimensions. Ultimately, it contends that a focus on these sequences helps to bring out both the film’s engagement an uncertainty that arose in the midst of waning moral values in 1960s Hong Kong, as well as Wong’s signature philosophical - and more “universal” – emphasis on a distinctive vertigo of time and memory. Footwear in the film functions as expressive of the conflict between desire and decorum, but it also reveals the instability of our grasp of the challenges posed by the film to spectatorial orientation.
