Histrionics of a Hong Kong migrant: Shu Qi’s transnational performance style in A Beautiful Life

ABSTRACT

This article examines Taiwanese actress Shu Qi’s theatrical mode of performance in Andrew Lau’s film, A Beautiful Life/Mei Li Ren Sheng (2011), as a way of trying to understand the diverse nature of Shu’s transnational stardom. Through a textual analysis of pivotal scenes from the film, the article argues that Shu’s virtuoso performance highlights a transnational acting style that challenges cultural understandings of acting in Chinese-language cinemas built around minimalism, thus suggesting the need for a reappraisal of what constitutes a ‘good’ screen performance in the East Asian region. Shu’s exaggerated performance style ultimately influences the performance delivery of her co-star, mainland Chinese actor Liu Ye. The emerging interplay between Shu’s and Liu’s acting techniques showcases the regional and transnational potential of Chinese film acting that exploits the energetic and corporeal registers of performance. In place of a minimalist acting style that focuses upon limited bodily movement and emotional restraint, the delineation of the somatic aspects of Shu’s performance, and a critical recognition of the presentational and expressive features of her voice, actions, and gestures, contributes to a more multilayered and exploratory understanding of East Asian and transnational film performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational film acting
• Chinese-language cinemas
• theatricality
• minimalist acting
• Shu Qi
• A Beautiful Life

Described by Lisa Funnell (2014) as a ‘pan-Asian chameleon’ for her ability to portray seamlessly characters from ‘a variety of national and ethnic identities’ within the East Asian region, Taiwanese actress Shu Qi has established a diverse acting career in both commercial and arthouse cinema (68).¹ A popular porn star, Shu’s casting in Hong Kong director Andrew Lau Wai-keung’s post-1997 action films, including Young and Dangerous 5/98 Goo Waak Chai Ji Lung Chang Foo Dau (1998), The Storm Riders/Fung Wan: Hung Ba Tin Ha (1998), and A Man Called Hero/Jung Wa Ying Hong (1999), generally portrayed Shu as a Chinese victim or love interest to the male protagonist, but these roles helped to ‘refashion her star persona to work in the mainstream film industry’ (Funnell 2014, 64). In the 2000s, Shu has become a prominent star in Chinese action cinema, referred to by Funnell (2014) as a ‘warrior woman’ (72–76). Although Shu’s lack of English proficiency has been a contributing factor to the actress’s inability to cross over successfully into Hollywood, Shu has garnered a strong reputation as a transnational actress within East Asian cinema. Yet despite Shu’s evolving and diverse star persona, she has received scant scholarly attention, apart from Funnell’s (2014) exploration into Shu’s action roles.

In this article, I am interested in exploring Shu’s acting as a way of trying to comprehend her multifaceted transnational stardom. But rather than discussing Shu’s roles in action cinema, I will be focusing on her performance as the Hong Kong migrant, Li Peiru, in the melodrama A Beautiful Life/Mei Li Ren Sheng (Andrew Lau, 2011), to which Shu was nominated for the Golden Horse Award in 2011; the Hong Kong Film Award in 2012; and the Hong Kong Film Critics Society Award in 2012. The film focuses on Peiru’s move from Hong Kong to Beijing, as she strives to establish a real estate business. Directed by long-term collaborator Lau, Shu’s performance is far removed from the ‘damsel in distress’ roles she played in the director’s action films of the late 1990s (Funnell 2014, 65). In fact, Shu’s theatrical mode of performance in A Beautiful Life, I will argue, showcases a transnational acting style that challenges cultural understandings of acting in East Asian cinema built around minimalism, thus contributing to a broader reconceptualization of what constitutes a ‘good’ screen performance in the region. Furthermore, I will explain how Shu’s exaggerated performance style in A Beautiful Life ultimately influences the performance delivery of her co-star, mainland Chinese actor Liu Ye. As I will demonstrate, the emerging interconnection between Shu’s and Liu’s acting techniques elucidates the regional and transnational potential of Chinese film acting that harnesses the energetic and somatic dimensions of performance.

Despite a burgeoning interest in transnational stardom, scant attention has been given to a close analysis of screen performance in critical and theoretical discourse within Chinese star studies (Bettinson 2015). To overcome this paucity of analysis at the level of acting, Gary Bettinson (2015) proposes that scholars should pursue a ‘poetics of performance’, which comprises a textual analysis and evaluation of the actor’s expressive choices, such as vocal and gestural attributes, in accordance with a film’s narrative and style (382). Although Bettinson (2015) is referring specifically to a ‘poetics of Hong Kong film acting and star performance’ (382), the poetics approach that he advocates could facilitate a deeper appreciation of Shu’s acting exploits in A Beautiful Life. Therefore, rather than turning to extra-textual factors to explain a star’s popularity, such as distribution and marketing practices or audience reception (Bettinson 2015, 385), the text-based methodology I will adopt in this article provides a more ‘descriptive and explanatory’ account of screen performance (383). Analysing performance in this productive and concrete manner complements what Lesley Stern and George Kouvaros (1999), writing more generally, describe as ‘an interest in how performance is manifested cinematically, how it registers semantically and somatically as cinema’ (3).

Minimalist acting as a transnational conduit for Chinese stardom

First, however, it would be useful to identify how acting has been understood in East Asian cinema, with a particular focus on the extent to which a minimalist acting style has shaped transnational Chinese performance. Sabrina Qiong (2014) classifies minimalist acting as a ‘culturally distinctive acting style’ (152), noting that acting – alongside other modern artistic practices – has been influenced by East Asian cultural and aesthetic traditions, in particular the simplicity, emptiness, and detachment associated with classical Chinese poetry, calligraphy, and painting. From Sabrina Qiong’s (2014) perspective, these principles of a painterly performance tradition (such as the stress given to empty space in traditional Chinese painting) provide the basis for a cultural evaluation of contemporary East Asian screen acting (151). Understanding acting as a cultural practice that is distinct from Western performance traditions and models, including the realist acting style epitomised by the Method, Sabrina Qiong (2014) surmises that

a good screen performance in an East Asian film usually requires minimal dialogue because silence can provide space for audiences to imagine the words that are not spoken out loud. Similarly, dramatic facial expressions are usually avoided so audiences are given more freedom to interpret the characters’ emotions (151).

Commending Chinese actress Tang Wei’s minimalist performance in Late Autumn/Man-Choo (Kim Tae-Yong, 2011) as indicative of this ‘culturally distinctive acting style’ (152), Sabrina Qiong (2014) highlights how Tang’s minimal use of facial expressions, body movements and dialogue conveys the character’s complex and underlying emotions, which in turn makes her performance ‘more accessible to audiences in other cultures’ (152). In so doing, Sabrina Qiong (2014) proposes that Tang’s nuanced, muted and often expressionless performance transcends national and cultural boundaries and becomes ‘truly transnational’ (149).

The minimalist acting style in East Asian cinema that Sabrina Qiong (2014) expounds upon serves as a ‘transnational vehicle’ in which a global audience can experience the cultural specificity of a ‘non-Hollywoodized acting style’ (152). Such a non-Western performance model demonstrates how an actor can achieve transnational appeal without their films necessarily circulating within mainstream cinema in the West (152). Nonetheless, the principle of ‘less is more’ that Sabrina Qiong (2014) associates with minimalist acting also features in the performances of transnational Chinese stars in films produced beyond East Asian cinemas. To name just one example, consider Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung’s European art cinema cross-over, in Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep (1996). Playing herself as a Hong Kong action diva, Cheung is cast in the title role of Irma Vep, in a meta-filmic French remake of Louis Feuillade’s silent crime serial Les Vampires (1915). In one scene, the film’s director, René Vidal (Jean-Pierre Léaud) explains how he wants Cheung to embody Irma Vep: ‘It’s very important to be simple. It is not because it is silent that you play more. You must play less’. Vidal’s advice to downplay the role of Irma Vep is taken up by Cheung in a later scene when she rehearses with a male co-star, Ferdinand (Olivier Torres), who plays the villain Moréno. As the actors conduct a breakdown of the scene where Moréno hypnotises Irma Vep, Ferdinand guides Cheung on how to play her part. Rather abruptly, and with the oversized gesturality befitting a silent film villain, Ferdinand cries out: ‘I don’t feel you’re scared!’ Cheung pauses, and takes a deep breath, as she ‘gets into character’. The camera tracks into a tighter close-up of the actress’s face.

Noticeable is the way in which Cheung channels the character’s fear. Eschewing silent cinema’s ‘pantomime tradition of exaggerated and clearly codified gestures’ (Hjort 2010, 36), Cheung’s facial work is controlled and minimal. Fear is conveyed through the actress’s breath, which becomes more laboured, while her movement from a standing position to a seated one is executed with a trance-like precision, particularly plausible given the theme of hypnosis, and the power dynamics between Moréno and Irma Vep. Although the film’s narrative might signal the failure of an Asian actress to pass for a French one (Chan 2010, 83), Cheung’s understated acting is a distinguishing feature that reinforces ‘her composure and marketability as an international star’ (Marchetti 2012, 104).

By the same token, focusing almost exclusively on the principles of a minimalist acting style may undervalue or overlook the complexity of an actor’s vocal and gestural choices across different filmmaking contexts and genres. A case in point is how some scholars (including Yu) have appraised Hong Kong-born actor Tony Leung Chiu-Wai within this minimalist acting tradition. An evaluation of Leung’s performance style is particularly relevant here because Leung does not just embody a minimalist approach to acting; he is also capable of purposefully exercising greater physical expression, subject to the exigencies of genre and characterisation. As I will go on to argue, it is precisely Leung’s flexibility as an accomplished East Asian film star within Chinese-language cinemas that provides a foundation through which we can then begin to understand Shu Qi’s diverse performative repertoire.

Reappraising minimalist acting in Chinese-language cinemas: The case of Tony Leung’s flexible performance style

Sabrina Qiong (2014) attributes Leung’s success with ‘his ability to use the expressions of his eyes to act in different roles’ (150), citing the actor’s restrained and muted performance in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A City of Sadness/Beiqing Chengshi (1989), in which he conveys emotion through subtle expressions of his face, eyes and bodily gestures rather than through dialogue. Noting instances of Leung’s understated performances in other critically acclaimed films, including In the Mood for Love/Fa Yeung Nin Wa (Wong Kar-wai, 2000), Infernal Affairs/Mou Gaan Dou (Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, 2002), Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai, 1994) and Lust, Caution/Se, Jie (Ang Lee, 2007), Sabrina Qiong (2014) expresses her preference for minimalist acting in Chinese cinema:

The fact that Leung is the most frequent winner at two of the most prestigious Chinese film awards – the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Film Festival Awards in Taiwan – strongly indicates that the minimalist style of acting is perceived as good acting in Chinese cinema (150).

In an assessment of the diverse nature of Leung’s stardom, Mark Gallagher (2010) affords greater complexity than Sabrina Qiong (2014) in his critical appraisal of Leung’s acting range. Countering Justin Wyatt’s (1994) observation that ‘[s]tar persona reinforces […] character typage by limiting the boundaries between which a character may be defined’ (53), Gallagher (2010) identifies variations in performance delivery between Leung’s dramatic roles on the one hand, and his comedies and action films on the other. Drawing from James Naremore, Gallagher (2010) asserts that Leung adopts a ‘representational’ style in his dramatic roles based on preserving the illusion of a closed, diegetic world (116), in which psychological motivation is conveyed through ‘a range of facial expressions best discerned in close-up or medium shot, limited or unhurried body movement, and a relaxed carriage’ (110). Conversely, Leung’s comedies and action films, such as Tokyo Raiders/Dong Jing Gong Lüe (Jingle Ma, 2000) and Chinese Odyssey 2002/Tian Xia Wu Shuang (Jeffrey Lau, 2002) often invite ‘presentational’ performances, ‘playfully acknowledging his characters’ comic situations with expansive gestures (including many fight scenes in both), broad smiles and extensive and often rapid dialogue’ (116). (Likewise, Leung and Maggie Cheung exude instances of facial, gestural and vocal expressivism in Zhang Yimou’s wuxia [swordplay] film Hero [2002], while their performances in In the Mood for Love call for greater emotional and physical restraint.) In making this distinction between the genre demands of drama, comedy and action, Gallagher (2010) does not relegate Leung to an exclusively minimalist acting style; rather, he draws attention to how the actor’s expressivity is facilitated, channelled or tempered according to the demands of genre and his collaboration with the director – from the theatrical gestures and faster movements in his comedies to the restrained performances in his arthouse films directed by auteurs such as Wong Kar-wai and Hou Hsiao-hsien – and these variations in performance delivery lead Gallagher (2010) to conclude that Leung exudes a polysemic star persona.²

Despite commending Leung’s flexible performance style and multilayered star persona, Gallagher (2010) maintains that Leung’s minimalist acting in dramatic roles remains the criterion upon which the transnational circulation of the actor’s star image to Western audiences is achieved. This evaluation is not because he believes that Leung’s presentational style of acting in his comedies is necessarily less amenable for wide international circulation than his more cerebral roles in arthouse cinema. Rather, as Gallagher (2010) explains, Leung’s accessibility to audiences outside East Asia is limited because only his films that have garnered critical appraisal and prestige at international festivals usually achieve distribution in the West. Notably, Gallagher (2010) deduces a degree of critical bias in the assessment of East Asian acting styles, illuminating how Leung’s performance signs in dramatic roles (which include small gestures and limited expressivity) ‘accommodate the taste preferences of the global art-house cinema’ (111). As Gallagher (2010) explicates:

Critical tunnel vision surrounding actors such as Leung arises from the mainstream/art-house binary, from related biases about disreputable genres, and from responses to particular modes of performance. The critical bias toward dramatic roles, and against comic or action-centred ones, corresponds to a widespread critical preference for ostensibly cerebral rather than accessible performances (115).

Elaborating upon the point about critical bias against ‘disreputable genres’ through a discussion of comedy films, Gallagher (2010) suggests a pattern in which East Asian comedies are understood as ‘highly localised or regionalised forms’ (114), as cultural differences (including taste preferences in the West) tend to inhibit the genre’s transnational marketability and circulation. With respect to the reception of Leung’s transnational stardom, Leung’s comedies – as well as other films within his diverse corpus such as romantic comedies and comic thrillers – are not theatrically distributed to Western audiences, which would explain, in part, why North American and Western European critics might be incognisant to the presentational and more expressive features emanating from the actor’s performances (Gallagher 2010, 113).

In line with Gallagher’s (2010) insights into East Asian comedy, Daniel Martin (2014) highlights how, despite Leung’s extensive filmography, critics often ignore or underappreciate the actor’s roles in action films, suggesting a distancing from the commercial and ‘exploitative’ aspects of Hong Kong action cinema (22). As a result, for Martin (2014), even Leung’s action films that achieve transnational distribution are often interpreted through a hierarchy of cultural taste that associates the actor (and his performance style) with the sensibilities of arthouse cinema. Discussing Leung’s performance in Infernal Affairs, Martin (2014) notes a tendency amongst critics to ‘[focus] on Leung’s face rather than his body, and his ability to express quiet emotion through subtle gestures’ (22). In contrast to the ‘traditional populist Hong Kong genre styles’ (some of which, incidentally, feature Leung, such as his roles in John Woo’s Bullet in the Head/Dip Huet Gaai Tau [1990] and Hard Boiled/Lat Sau San Taam [1992]), Martin (2014) argues that the critical bias towards Leung’s supposedly internalised and intellectual acting style in Infernal Affairs over a more relatable and somatically expressive performance mode proved influential in the film’s critical reception as ‘a “new” kind of spectacle: intellectual rather than kinetic’ (23). Thus, as Martin (2014) asserts, Leung’s reputation as a serious actor, consolidated over time through numerous accolades and critical reviews of his performances, often prefigures the canonisation of his transnationally distributed films (including action films) within the art cinema tradition – albeit usually at the expense of a closer investigation into the somatic aspects of his performances, such as the actor’s bodily movement and more expansive gestural lexicon in spectacle sequences.³

Gallagher’s (2010) and Martin’s (2014) insights into the polysemic stardom of Leung have important implications for thinking about how different modes of performance in Chinese-language cinemas could facilitate (or fail to facilitate) national and transnational circulation and reception. While cultural differences and taste preferences might preclude particular genres from entering mainstream or arthouse cinema in the West, this is not a prerequisite for an actor to achieve transnational success. In their discussion of transnational cinema within a Chinese context, Will Higbee and Song Hwee Lim (2010) point out the ‘plurality of the concept of Chinese “national” cinemas’, suggesting a mobilisation of the transnational to profile ‘filmmaking activities located in several geographical regions [… that] somehow share certain linguistic and cultural traits of “Chineseness”’ (14). Funnell (2013) explains how this description of Chinese cinemas as transnational ‘does not necessarily displace the notion of the national, but rather repositions it in a broader ethnic framework’ (117). Exploring transnational performance in this manner could shed light upon diverse production and consumption contexts within Chinese cinemas. Funnell (2013) makes a similar point:

The discussion of transnational Chinese stardom must move beyond the Hollywood crossover to consider Chinese stars and their star texts within Chinese industrial contexts (118).

This is not to say that the production and distribution practices of East Asian films are limited exclusively to intra-Asian circulation, however. Funnell (2013) notes the diversity of the Chinese film market that extends beyond East Asia to reach the Chinese diaspora, meaning that

[t]he appeal of transnational Chinese stars thus resides in the way that their personas are developed, mobilized on screen, and consumed by filmgoers across the globe (118).

On another related level, by extending beyond the strictures of minimalist acting as transnational vehicle, a more exploratory and multilayered understanding of performance in East Asian cinema could overcome the critical bias towards dramatic roles in arthouse cinema, instead addressing genres more accessible to mainstream audiences, including comedy, melodrama, and action. Specifically, greater inclusivity and appraisal could be given to performance styles that depart from the cultural sensibility and restraint of minimalist acting, as is evident in Shu Qi’s histrionics in A Beautiful Life, thus broadening cultural taste and deepening appreciation and critical understanding of acting (and the star’s polysemic persona) in pan-Asian cinema, ultimately opening up the possibility for a closer investigation into the corporeal features of Chinese screen performance. In effect, heightened theatricality in screen acting could be accessible to audiences of popular genres, due to a telegraphing of emotions through exaggerated facial expressions and bodily movements, as opposed to the cerebral performances that circulate in arthouse films usually dedicated to viewers with ‘high degrees of cultural capital’ (Gallagher 2010, 115).

Shu’s minimalist acting in The Assassin

Although she has received considerably less scholarly attention than Tony Leung, a mutable and heterogeneous star persona can also be identified across several of Shu’s performances, in which each of the roles combined with the filmmakers’ methods dictate the degree of expressivity required from the actress. In her collaborations with Hou Hsiao-hsien, for example, Shu models her bodily comportment and energy in a way that supports the minimalist style espoused by Sabrina Qiong (2014). Echoing Sabrina Qiong’s (2014) and Gallagher’s (2010) insights into how minimalist acting encourages the viewer to interpret the performance, as opposed to emotions being overtly displayed, Hou (as cited in Liang 2015) describes his method of working with actors in an interview for The Assassin/Nie Yin Niang (2015):

What is performance? You have seen too many Hollywoodmovies if you expect the performers to show their actions andemotions clearly. But why should there be one type of performance? It’s true that my actors stand distant from the camera so that their movements are not always clear to the audience. But I hope that such distance can make you think more, even after the on-screen actions are over (31).

It is Hou’s method of employing long takes and long shots in The Assassin that often motivates Shu’s limited range of movement and expressivity, resulting in a (conscious) underplaying of emotional reactions. When the assassin Nie Yinniang (Shu Qi) intrudes upon the home of her cousin, the military governor Tian Ji’an (Chang Chen), whom she has been assigned to kill, she creeps stealthily towards Tian’s bedroom, and eavesdrops upon a conversation between Tian and his wife, Lady Tian (Zhou Yun). Yinniang’s movement is slow and purposeful, matching the subtle tracking movement of the camera and the slight trembling of curtains that serve as a barrier of visibility between assassin and victim. Initially, the curtains mask Yinniang’s entrance, but as the camera tracks from right to left, the character is unveiled, rooted in the centre of the frame in long shot, with the curtains separated at either side – the theatrical tableau thus resembling a proscenium arch that foregrounds the assassin’s arrival. As the scene progresses, long takes highlight Yinniang’s stillness, while minute camera movements evoke a tactile sensation by drawing out the materiality and texture of curtains that quiver in the foreground (and also behind Yinniang). This tactility and mobility create an impending sense of disquiet or instability in juxtaposition to the character’s neutral facial expressions and tight bodily comportment. In effect, the scene’s mise en scène evokes Yinniang’s defiant and steely presence. Yinniang’s intrusion into the domestic setting of her cousin’s home in this scene is indicative of how the assassin can be absent from onscreen events for lengthy periods during the film, only to reappear, suddenly, unannounced, usually anchored within the frame, yet poised and alert, like a cat ready to pounce upon its prey.⁴

Although Yinniang ultimately abandons her task of killing Tian, to which master Jiaxin (Fang-Yi Sheu) evaluates her protégé’s skills as ‘matchless’, but her mind as ‘hostage to human sentiments’, the lack of emotional revelation on the part of the actress might lead some viewers to concur with Anthony Carew’s (2016) assessment of the assassin as ‘deadly yet always distant, blank but bothered by internal torment; she is at once aching, aloof, unruffled, unknowable’ (65). Nevertheless, Hou’s tendency to stage events in long shots can also allow the viewer to draw their own conclusions about the character’s purposeful yet enigmatic presence. For example, Yinniang’s solemn gesture of kowtowing three times before Jiaxin to express gratitude, but also to renounce killing (as well as her personal choice to leave the political environment of Weibo and become a guardian) denotes the character’s spiritual transformation and newfound autonomy, in opposition to the social and political strictures that had previously governed her life (Kraushaar 2017, 122). For a contemporary audience watching a period film set in the 9^th Century Tang Dynasty, Yinniang’s gesture thus helps to provide greater legibility.

Intoxicating moments: Shu’s heightened theatricality in A Beautiful Life

In place of a minimalist acting style characterised by a limited range of body movements and the tempering of emotional display, the heightened theatricality replete in Shu Qi’s performance in A Beautiful Life provides an alternative yet conspicuous transmissibility of bodily expressivity and feelings in pan-Asian cinema, in this case through a China-Hong Kong coproduction. In the opening scene of the film, Peiru is singing drunkenly with friends in a karaoke bar in Beijing, wherein her exaggerated performance style appears too farcical for the mood and tempo of the song. Singing out of key, her bodily rhythm not in kilter with the other singers, Peiru makes expansive gestures as she raises her arms, points self-reflexively at the audience and performs repeated twirls, before belting out a high-pitched scream during the song’s brief instrumental section.⁵ As the mobile camera tries to keep up with her erratic movements, Peiru abruptly exits the performance space and, with the microphone still in hand, brushes past one of her friends towards a male admirer who is shouting drinks. An elliptical cut reveals them drinking shots, as Peiru ‘mixes’ conversation with lyrics from the song. Peiru’s gestures and behaviour can be construed as reckless and without refrain, in ways that exceed narrative demand, and this overplaying on the part of karaoke singer is symptomatic of a pattern of excess that is dispersed across the film in the way that the actress mobilises and channels her bodily energy in her depiction of a character in a perpetual state of crisis. Peiru’s drunkenness often fuels these disorderly performative acts, whether it be stumbling into the men’s bathroom and vomiting on the back of Beijing-born policeman and love interest, Fang Zhendong (Liu Ye), or hugging and kissing him incessantly in her apartment, often sustaining such intoxicating moments to the point of passing out.

Perhaps the most striking illustration of Shu’s virtuoso performance in A Beautiful Life is displayed in the scene that takes place in an alleyway, following the dinner to commemorate the autistic Zhencong’s (Tian Liang) marriage to the mute Xiaowan (Feng Danying). Filmed in a long take of around five and a half minutes, an animated and alcohol fuelled Peiru displays a presentational mode of performance as she complains bitterly to a bemused Zhendong about her financial, familial and relationship woes. In this scene, the duration of the long take facilitates Peiru’s moments of theatricality and despair to be drawn out to the point of excess, while the staging of the action, predominantly in long shot to medium long shot, allows the actors (particularly Shu) to perform with their whole bodies. Much of the scene’s viewing pleasure resides in the ongoing conflict instigated through Peiru’s fluctuating moods and bodily agitation and Zhendong’s valiant but unsuccessful attempts to appease her untempered behaviour. Cynthia Baron and Sharon Marie Carnike (2008) note how ‘actors adjust the quality and energy of their gestures, voices, and actions to fit their characters’ shifting desires and interactions with others’ (44). On the one hand, the heightened theatricality evident in Shu’s performance delivery in this scene is motivated by the character’s intoxicated state and emotional instability, as is evident in her giddy movements as she walks in zigzags, threatening at any moment to lose balance and self-control. On the other hand, her loose gait and volatility are not enacted in isolation, but rather demonstrate how the actress modifies and embellishes the vocal, gestural, and energetic dimensions of her performance as a way of expressing the character’s feelings (or the inability to express how she feels) and to dictate the scene’s performative dynamics with the intention of evoking various reactions from Zhendong, ranging from provocation to sympathy verging on pathos.

Playing opposite Peiru’s animated and at times volatile persona, Zhendong is often reduced to a pacifying role, not only emotionally, as in the way that he offers consolation with the question: ‘Miss Li, are you alright?’, but also somatically, through how his body is like a pillar to offer support to Peiru’s unbalanced and extremely loose carriage. At one point in their lively encounter, Peiru’s body unexpectedly goes limp, leading her to huddle over as if about to pass out. Zhendong places his hands in an awkward manner beneath Peiru’s extended arms and lifts her, as if attempting to straighten her undisciplined body. Zhendong’s attempt to hold Peiru in an embrace is characteristic of the clash in performance styles in this scene, where the reserved and refined Zhendong exercises bodily and emotional restraint with the intension of blocking and tempering Peiru’s melodramatics. But Peiru quickly tries to break Zhendong’s embrace, swinging with her arms and swaying with her body, and these counter-movements highlight the ambivalence of their relationship and the rejection of any restrictions being enforced upon her tempestuous conduct. The positioning of the actors, and Peiru’s counter-movements, resemble the performative dynamics evident throughout Mabel Longhetti’s (Gena Rowlands) encounter with Garson Cross (George Dunn), in John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence (1974). Returning to Mabel’s family home after meeting in a singles bar, Garson holds Mabel in an embrace, but she redirects his advances, turning their physical contact into an impromptu and ungainly dance. As Garson proceeds to smother Mabel with kisses, the exaggerated swaying back-and-forth dance movements transition into more frenetic actions as Mabel slaps Carson, and smacks him with her handbag, crying, ‘cut it out!’, the scene highlighting how Mabel draws upon a range of gestural and vocal choices to circumvent Carson’s explicit come-ons.

Though there are aesthetic and cultural differences between Cassavetes’ films and A Beautiful Life, other similarities in performance style between Peiru and Mabel can be identified. In his discussion of Gena Rowlands’ performance as Mabel in A Woman Under the Influence, George Kouvaros (1999) assesses Mabel’s gestures as an overflow of emotions and signs that cannot be contained within the narrative and so are resistant to linear analysis. In a similar vein, Peiru’s overabundant performance signs in A Beautiful Life – her constantly flailing arms and zigzagged footwork – permeate the scene and resist Zhendong’s attempts at appeasement. At one point, Peiru playfully teases Zhendong for having shed tears earlier in relation to his brother’s marriage. Peiru runs her fingers repeatedly down Zhendong’s cheeks, frivolously, to indicate tears, until Zhendong concedes that he was crying. The next moment, Peiru breaks into a tantrum, raising her arms in despair, and then incessantly slaps Zhendong, bemoaning how her family doesn’t support her. Following a momentary refrain, Peiru appears to have regained her composure, as if she has come to terms with her predicament. But this impression that the scene may have reached closure is quickly thwarted, as Peiru breaks from Zhendong’s embrace and storms back in the opposite direction, lamenting that ‘I haven’t been hired for six months. Even a mute is wanted but not me!’ Peiru’s movement away from the camera and the restaging of a performative outburst are indicative of how the character’s journey is circular in this scene, as opposed to linear, and this circularity foregrounds the somatic aspects of the performing body – a body enduring an unresolved crisis.

Other aspects of the mise en scène, including lighting and composition, and the interlacing of sound, editing and image contribute to the cinematic construction of the actress’s performance. Thinking about this dynamic and multidimensional interplay between acting and the other cinematic elements, but with a particular focus on the actorly, Baron and Carnike (2008) expound upon how ‘performance details extend, support, and counterbalance impressions, meaning, and significance created by other filmic choices’ (5). In the alleyway scene, the tracking backwards of the camera adds a material layer to the visceral nature of Peiru’s frenzied gestures and expressions, while the sound of lightning in the background mirrors the energetic charge that is transmitted from Peiru’s melodramatic overreactions. When Peiru bangs her fists against the wall in frustration, the confined setting, and the slight tilting up of the camera convey a sense of entrapment that comments upon her personal and financial predicament as a Hong Kong migrant struggling to attain a more prosperous and fulfilling future in her move to the north.

With specific reference to diasporic identities in his assessment of the film Comrades: Almost a Love Story/Tian Mimi (Peter Chan, 1996), Sheldon H. Lu (2000) writes, ‘a sense of rootlessness still defines the existential, emotional condition of the ordinary Hong Kong citizen’ (278), adding that ‘national affiliation did not solve the crisis of identity’ (278). The sense of rootlessness that Lu (2000) attributes to the Hong Kong diaspora is encapsulated in the instability and bodily erraticism Shu injects in her portrayal of the boisterous migrant. Instead of construing Shu’s exorbitant performance style as in contradistinction to verisimilitude, however, her accentuated expressivity speaks directly to the degree of existential uncertainty that informs Peiru’s lived experience within the setting’s postcolonial space, illuminating what Jinhua (2014) describes as Hong Kong’s ‘nebulous future’, in which the ‘One Country, Two System guideline’ remains problematic and suggests ‘political non-commitment’ (32). Rather than characterising Peiru as a victim, however, her embodied presence and actions also underscore the character’s attempt to thwart this pervasive sense of indeterminacy, therefore alluding to how ‘a transnational, flexible, diasporic citizenship […] can be ultimately turned into a source of agency and creative [and economic] transformation’ (Lu 2000, 285–286). In light of Hong Kong’s polycentric identity and socio-political turbulence, then, Shu’s performance can be perceived as culturally distinctive, even though the dynamic interrelationship between performer and context differs significantly from the cultural and aesthetic traditions that have underpinned minimalist acting.

Furthermore, Lau’s cinematographic discernment of pressuring the space, through the temporal elongation of the long take, facilitates a greater awareness of the actress’s somatic presence and lived experience, meaning that, as Murray Pomerance (2008) has argued in another context, the pulsing of time offers not only narrative time but also brings into relief ‘an instant of performance [that] is biographical and biological, a summation in every previous moment in an actor’s life’ (203). For instance, we can deduce, in the precarity of Peiru’s position, Shu’s own grappling with her Taiwanese (as opposed to Chinese) identity.⁶ To this end, Shu’s deployment of bodily energy through a time-space continuum, and her hyperbolic behaviour, exemplifies melodrama’s propensity to prioritise women’s experiences, thus providing ‘a forum for the expression of repressed [or marginalised] feminine voices’ (Dissanayake 1993, 2).

Noticeable also is the way in which the actress plays with the sonority and materiality of speech to expand upon the somatic and semantic aspects of her performance. Initially, her speech is fragmented, interspersed with panting and sobbing, as if the material exertion required to communicate places her under serious duress. Alongside this, Peiru’s haphazard switching between Cantonese and Mandarin reflects the character’s identity crisis and sense of displacement as a member of Hong Kong’s diaspora. As her monologue reaches a vitriolic note, however, she starts speaking in quicker bursts, and her voice rises in pitch and volume, accompanied by theatrical gestures such as sweeping arm movements. Painting Zhendong’s family life as idyllic, Peiru uses acerbic wit to describe her miserable existence, referring to her mother as ‘a bitch when she wants money’, who uses her ‘as an ATM’. The more biting Peiru’s insults, the sharper her gestures become, as she pokes and slaps Zhendong, though the extent of her provocations remains inscrutable upon his visage.

Foregrounding speech in a way that complements the energetic, corporeal, and psychological dimensions of Shu’s performance contests a minimalist acting style that often downplays the role of dialogue. Sabrina Qiong (2014) contends that minimal dialogue can enable an actor to overcome cultural and linguistic barriers, suggesting a privileging of body language over speech. On a pragmatic level, this idea has some merit if we consider Hou’s method of working with the actors in The Assassin, wherein the film’s use of the old guwen language (classical Chinese) provided expressive limitations, so the actors were required to compensate for this lack of expression through their bodies (Aliza 2015, 30). Notwithstanding linguistic considerations in the formation of an actor’s star persona in cross-cultural, epic, and transnational film productions, a limitation of bodily expression being prioritised over – at times even superseding – speech is that the performative potential of language remains underexplored. Writing about performance in A Woman Under the Influence, Kouvaros (1999) observes how Cassavetes ‘allows a recognition of performance to permeate the film by focusing on the materiality and effort of speech, gesture and act’ (62). Speech in the alleyway scene also takes on a performative function that operates in tandem with the expressivity communicated outwardly and extravagantly through Peiru’s gestures and actions. To be sure, Shu harnesses the affective and performative potential of language – its rhythm, sonority, and pitch – while simultaneously teasing out the tangible registers of her voice, for instance, in the material weight given to breathing and crying. This exploration into the materiality of speech and noise production, in close correlation with the actress’s hyper-expressive bodily performance and a countenance that borders on hysterical, serves to accentuate Peiru’s embodiment of crisis and suffering that is in accordance with the film’s overall melodramatic tone. As such, Shu’s diverse vocal repertoire and bilingual proficiency in this scene provide a more multilayered approach to understanding acting as a transnational vehicle than Sabrina Qiong’s (2014) minimalist acting model because the actress does not need to prioritise body language at the expense of dialogue in order to transcend cultural and linguistic barriers. Rather, voice, gesture and movement coalesce, resulting in the generation of bodily affect that circulates between performer and spectator (Stern and Kouvaros 1999, 20–21).

Rethinking Chinese film acting through the transmissibility of bodily performance

Shu’s extravagant performance style in A Beautiful Life should not be understood exclusively as a means of conveying the character’s inner crisis, but rather is illustrative of how an overplaying on the part of Hong Kong migrant enables the actress to transmit her bodily energy outwards (as opposed to minimalist acting’s tendency to internalise), and this transmissibility of bodily performance ultimately influences Liu’s vocal and gestural work. Consequently, Shu’s performance style provides the impetus for rethinking theoretical and practical understandings of acting in mainland China. A significant instance of transmutation in the dynamics of performance from one actor to the other becomes apparent following a narrative turning point in which the ever-reliable police officer is diagnosed with dementia. It is the lowest point in the film for both protagonists: Zhendong is forced to resign from duty and loses the love of his life; Peiru becomes bankrupt, and she returns to Hong Kong to live with her brother, appearing withdrawn and defeated. Gone is the unbridled energy that marked her countenance and idiolect in Beijing. While her brother’s friends huddle around the television playing a video game with gusto, Peiru’s demeanour is divorced from this ebullient social interaction. Alone, her appearance unkempt, she works half-heartedly on a modest jewellery project in the drab and claustrophobic setting of her bedroom.

In her account of the film as a migrant love story, Helen Hok-Sze Leung (2015) takes the rather cynical view that Zhendong’s disability presents ‘a litmus test of redemption for the able-bodied, materialistic, and disloyal Hong Kong migrant’ (275). Whether or not we agree with this characterisation of Peiru, she passes the test. Upon hearing the news about Zhendong’s diagnosis, Peiru adopts the role of carer, while also bearing his child. These developments in their relationship also coincide with Shu’s tempering of her performance delivery that became more apparent following her return to Hong Kong: her gestures become more subdued and refined; her bodily alignment more restricted. It is tempting to interpret Peiru’s transformation and succumbing to the selfless, maternal role of wife and carer as indicative of the Chinese family-ethics melodrama driven by ‘Confucian-derived values’, wherein duty ultimately reigns supreme over personal desire (Berry 2007, 33). Notwithstanding Peiru’s ‘domestication’, what destabilises this ideological reading is the parallel reversal and schizophrenic splintering of Zhendong’s psychological state and corresponding mode of performance; indeed, Zhendong’s pathological condition leads him to behave in an increasingly hysterical manner.

One scene which showcases Zhendong’s shift to an exorbitant mode of performance (that coincides with his memory loss) takes place at the police headquarters several months following his resignation. Filmed in a long take of about three and a half minutes, the scene opens with Zhendong seated at a desk opposite another young police officer, flanked by nearly a dozen standing officers. In this scene, Zhendong exhibits a much looser carriage than previously in the film. He makes large movements with his arms and slaps the young officer on the chest in a jovial manner, as he recounts his history working in the police force, and his friendship with former partner, Shen Guiping. Zhendong’s carefree demeanour and bodily comportment are juxtaposed with the restrained emotions, stillness, and stiltedness of his fellow officers; this contrast in bodily conduct and energy distinguishes Zhendong’s performance style from the more minimalist acting of the officers, but their lack of accord with his mien (particularly given that he appears to be under the false impression of still working there) creates a sense of disquiet and alienates him from the sombre surroundings. When the young officer gently notifies Zhendong that Guiping has been transferred to another precinct (Tianjin), Zhendong’s temperament immediately changes. Confused, he slams the desk, crying out ‘cut the crap!’ As confusion turns to paranoia, Zhendong scans the officers, and, unable to locate Guiping, accuses them of looking down on him. Zhendong then recounts a traumatic event that occurred during his time as a police officer, which involved being shot in the head whilst pursuing a criminal. As he narrates, his bodily agitation becomes palpable.

What follows is a repertoire of wild and anguished gesticulations: frenetic pointing at the officers, clutching his forehead, chest slapping, and tugging nervously at his shirt, as if suffocated by his former colleagues whose proximity blankets his exit – the uninterrupted shot and gradual tracking forward of the camera also reinforcing the mise en scène’s restricted space. Zhendong’s speech becomes impeded with heavy breathing followed by spasmodic bursts of dialogue. For their part, the officers appear resolute in their uniformity; however, Zhendong’s ‘hysteria’ ultimately affects them.

Just as Zhendong becomes more animated and perturbed in his gestures (hammering the desk repeatedly in a state of distress and swivelling violently in his chair as he lashes out at his oppressors), so, too, does a crack start to appear on some of the officers’ stony visages, insofar as they can no longer withhold their emotions: a female officer bursts into tears; a male officer hangs his head in sorrow; others shake their heads vehemently to reject Zhendong’s accusations; still others come forward to console him with a reassuring touch on the shoulder. If, in an earlier scene, the officers were united in a lengthy gesture of salute to commemorate Zhendong’s resignation, their gestures now appear quite divided, less mechanised, more individualised, instinctive, empathetic, as if Zhendong’s overt method of self-expression has fostered communication on a bodily level. But the once sturdy now increasingly unsteady Zhendong is to make a sudden, explosive move: a moment of operatic zenith is reached when he springs from his chair and wrestles his way through the circle of officers, who struggle desperately to refrain his disorderly deportment. It is only when Peiru (who is now pregnant) enters the room and calls Zhendong’s name that his hysteria finally subsides, therefore delineating a distinct reversal in acting methods and expressive range where Peiru has now adopted the pacifying role.

Multifaceted, transnational acting in Chinese-language cinemas

A minimalist acting style has cultural and transnational significance in Chinese-language cinemas. Yet it would be a mistake to conceptualise all screen performances within the East Asian region through a critical sensibility that privileges the emotional restraint and muted physical expression synonymous with minimalist acting. Indeed, exploring screen performance through an exclusively minimalist lens severs the possibility of appraising an actor’s range in performances that demand more expressive vocal and gestural practices. To theorise and appreciate the malleable and multilayered dimensions of an actor’s craft, then, critical writing about performance should be able to embrace those performers whose corpus brings into relief oscillations in their performative range – both minimalism and presentationism – as is evident in the acting of polysemic stars such as Shu Qi and Tony Leung. Shu’s ability to innervate her body in A Beautiful Life, for example, through a theatrical mode of performance, and the ways in which bodily affect and energy are transmitted between the performers and the embodied spectator, makes a strong case for the regional and transnational efficacy of this performance delivery.

That Shu’s outsized, exaggerated performance generates such a pervasive influence on the performative landscape (in terms of acting and reacting) in this China-Hong Kong co-production, culminating in the theatrical amplification of Liu Ye’s performance delivery, suggests the potential to reconceptualise screen acting in Chinese-language cinemas in a way that explicates, more fully, those somatic and gestural registers of performance that have often been elided from critical discourse. A textual analysis of Chinese film acting that attends to the ‘moment-by-moment revelation of the player’s performance’ (Bettinson 2015, 384), then, provides a fruitful mode of enquiry into acknowledging the salient performative trademarks of a transnational performance style.

Filmography

Cassavetes, John, dir. 1974. A Woman Under the Influence. USA: Faces International Films.

Chan, Peter, dir. 1996. Comrades: Almost a Love Story/Tian Mimi. Hong Kong: Golden Harvest, etc.

Hou Hsiao-hsien, dir. 1989. A City of Sadness/Beiqing Chengshi. Taiwan: 3-H Films, ERA International.

Hou Hsiao-hsien, dir. 2015. The Assassin/Nie Yin Niang. Taiwan, China and Hong Kong: Central Motion Pictures, etc.

Kim Tae-Yong, dir. 2011. Late Autumn/Man-Choo. South Korea: Boram Entertainment, etc.

Lau, Andrew, dir. 1998. Young and Dangerous 5/98 Goo Waak Chai Ji Lung Chang Foo Dau. Hong Kong: Golden Harvest.

Lau, Andrew, dir. 1998. The Storm Riders/Fung Wan: Hung Ba Tin Ha. Hong Kong: Golden Harvest.

Lau, Andrew, dir. 1999. A Man Called Hero/Jung Wa Ying Hong. Hong Kong: Golden Harvest and Sahamongkol Film International.

Lau, Andrew, and Mak, Alan, dirs. 2002. Infernal Affairs/Mou Gaan Dou. Hong Kong: Media Asia Films and Basic Pictures.

Lau, Andrew, dir. 2009. Look for a Star/Yau Lung Hei Fung. Hong Kong: Media Asia Distribution.

Lau, Andrew, dir. 2011. A Beautiful Life/Mei Li Ren Sheng. China & Hong Kong: Media Asia Films, Beijing Bona Film and Cultural Communication, etc.

Lau, Jeffrey, dir. 2002. Chinese Odyssey 2002/Tian Xia Wu Shuang. Hong Kong: Shanghai Film Group Corporation.

Lam, Wai-Lun, dir. 1998. Another Meltdown/Bi Xie Lan Tian. Hong Kong: China Star Entertainment.

Lee, Ang, dir. 2007. Lust, Caution/Se, Jie. USA, China and Taiwan: Haishang Films, etc.

Luo, Li Xian, dir. 1998. Extreme Crisis/B Gai Waak. Hong Kong: Diagonal Pictures.

Ma, Jingle, dir. 2000. Tokyo Raiders/Dong Jing Gong Lüe. Hong Kong: Golden Harvest.

Wong Kar-wai, dir. 1994. Chungking Express. Hong Kong: Jet Tone Production.

Wong Kar-wai, dir. 2000. In the Mood for Love/Fa Yeung Nin Wa. Hong Kong: Block 2 Pictures, etc.

Woo, John, dir. 1990. Bullet in the Head/Dip Huet Gaai Tau. Hong Kong: Golden Princess Film Production.

Woo, John, dir. 1992. Hard Boiled/Lat Sau San Taam. Hong Kong: Golden Princess Film Production.

Yimou, Zhang, dir. 2002. Hero. China: Beijing New Picture Film, etc.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sebastian Byrne

Dr. Sebastian Byrne has been teaching at Western Sydney University for twelve years, tutoring in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, and Social Sciences specialising in Cinema Studies. He completed his Doctorate of Creative Arts (DCA) in 2012 which comprised an exegesis, and a feature-length screenplay, entitled Game, Set and Murder, written in the genre of the sports film. The exegesis explored ways in which the character is constructed in goal-driven narrative cinema, with a case study on the performance of the actor in the sports film. Since completing his doctorate, he has published several articles on film performance, written two screenplays – collaborating with script editor and animator, Jack Feldstein – and is currently seeking funding, while also preparing a journal article based on performance styles in The Infernal Affairs trilogy.

Notes

1. The national and ethnic identities of Shu’s characters include Hong Kong Chinese (Extreme Crisis/B Gai Waak [Li Xian Luo, 1998]), mainland Chinese (Another Meltdown/Bi Xie Lan Tian [Wai-Lun Lam, 1998]), Malaysian (Young and Dangerous films), and Japanese (A Man Called Hero [1999]) (Funnell 2014, 68).

2. A similar variation in ‘representational’ and ‘presentational’ styles can be identified in Andy Lau’s performances in his collaborations with director Andrew Lau. For example, in the romantic comedy Look for a Star/Yau Lung Hei Fung (2009), Lau is quite expressive in his gestures, such as the way he opens his eyes wide and raises his eyebrows in a comical fashion, while adopting an expansive carriage. By contrast, in Infernal Affairs, Lau’s facial expressions and movements are more minimal to indicate a performance mode tied to ‘psychological realism’ (Naremore 1988, 38).

3. Martin (2014) notes how this canonising of Infernal Affairs by critics as an art film rather than an action film is in opposition to the film’s marketing by its distribution company, which promoted it as a quintessential action film.

4. The composure and Zen-like concentration that Yinniang exudes also carries over into scenes that foreground bodily action, in particular the fight sequences in this wuxia (swordplay) genre, where the assassin demonstrates a greater economy and precision of movement than her adversaries, such as in her duels with Tian.

5. Peiru’s ostentatious rendition evokes Gina Marchetti’s (2012) notion of femininity as a ‘masquerade’ that is analogous to the ‘schizophrenia’ of Hong Kong’s postmodern condition (106).

6. Upon discovering that her nationality had been mistakenly categorised as Chinese at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015, Shu quickly protested in front of the press, adamant about her Taiwanese identity (Jen-Hao Walter Hsu 2019).