Word: cheung
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Starring Leslie Cheung and Zhang Fengyi; Miramax...
...your cinematic core curriculum. The co-winner of the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or, "Farewell My Concubine" is a work that is both universal and undeniably Chinese, tracing the relationship of two men through fifty years of Chinese history. With superb acting (especially from star Leslie Cheung) and beautiful mainland China as its backdrop, the movie is an epic tale that somehow remains intensely personal. Less melodramatic than "The Joy Luck Club" and more realistic than "The Wedding Banquet," "Farewell My Concubine" provides the viewer with a glimpse into the way modern Chinese view the tumultuous events...
...tale of two Chinese opera stars, "Farewell My Concubine" benefits from Taiwanese director Chen Kaige's masterful use of lighting, sound, and setting. This skill is apparent from the movie's beginning--reuniting in 1977, post-Cultural Revolution China, the movie's two main characters, Cheng Dieyi(Leslie Cheung) and Duan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) walk tentatively side by side into the bright light of a bare gymnasium, to be greeted by a single admirer rather than the thousands they once entertained. This make-shift stage, with its single spotlight, bears an eerie resemblance to the interrogation rooms of the Communists...
Despite Xiaolou's strength, the story reallyrevolves around the character of Dieyi, and thefact that actor Leslie Cheung is up to thischallenging role is what makes the movie asuccess. Cheung, despite being a Hong Kong popstar accustomed to playing leading man roles, isperfectly cast. His Dieyi is in some ways the mostfeminine character of the movie, a tragic figurefaithful to the man be loves. The son of aprostitute, Dieyi comes to depend upon Xiaolou forguidance and purpose. The young Dieyi is already asexually ambiguous figure, and this ambiguity isincreased by being forced to sing lines like "I amby nature...
...only Leslie Cheung, the beautifully androgynous star of Farewell My Concubine, had been cast as the singer in M. Butterfly; in his delicacy and passion, he is enough woman for any man to fall for. But then Cheung, a Hong Kong actor living in Vancouver, might not have been available for the role of his career. As Cheng Dieyi, a homosexual star of the Peking Opera who is riven by jealousy when his "stage brother" Duan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) marries a call girl (Gong Li), Cheung is both steely and vulnerable, with a sexuality that transcends gender -- a Mandarin Michael...