Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in Rotterdam

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http://www.filmfestivals.com/servlet/JSCRun?obj=ShowNewsRotterdam&CfgPath=ffs/filinfo&Cfg=news.cfg&news=general&text_id=16382

Pictures of T&M are available on the site.

Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in Rotterdam
February 02, 2001

As the Rotterdam Film Festival is world-renowned for its focus on emerging trends in Asian cinema -- of all the films screening in Rotterdam, nearly 60% are from Asia -- it is to be expected that Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung would get the Star Treatment. In town for the Main Programme showing of one of the most appreciated year 2000 films worldwide, In the Mood for Love, the two were heartily welcomed at the evening Late Show, which was standing room only. It was so packed that the regularly filled-to-capacity late night films were showing empty seats.

Emceed by none other than festival director Simon Fields himself, the press conference with Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung earlier in the day turned out to be quite a surprising moment as the two Honk Kong stars were clearly in the mood for confession and talked about working with Wong Kar-wai in all honesty.

What made Wong Kar Wai a interesting director when you started working with him?

Cheung: "Actually, when he offered me to work on his first film, As Tears go by, I didn't think he was an interesting director. I didn't even want to do it, because at the time I was already signed for other films, and I didn't have the time. But somehow the investor of this film insisted that I should be in it, and I ended up doing it.

At first, I was very much against the whole project, but it was during the shoot that I found I realized that he was asking for different things from me than what I did usually, so he got me curious. After that, it gave me many ways to develop into another kind of actress. I was much more interested in being than I was at the time doing all these action films, comedies, ghost films, flying around in the air, you now, no big deal!" (laughs)

Leung: "I really enjoyed As Tears go by. One day, Won Kar Wai offered me the chance to play a character in Days of Being Wild. He's very good at telling stories, so I accepted. But I did not do quite well at the beginning. I didn't know why, I had been working as an actor for ten years, I know I'm quite good, but I just can't finish one simple scene, with just one line of dialogue. And he kept asking me to do it again and again. I went through a painful and exhausting week, with over 20 takes per scene. When I saw the movie, I saw the last scene and I was quite shocked, I thought: "How could I do that?" He just had that kind of magic power to get you into the characters."

About their shooting experiences with Wong Kar Wai:

Cheung: "On In the Mood for Love, frustrations came after 6 months of shooting. I wanted to know more, but he didn't answer me, and I was extending my stay in Honk Kong from 3 months to 6 months, and then 12, and 15. I just couldn't split myself in two for 15 months like that. But towards the end of the shooting, I was enjoying playing, and I understood his way of working."

Leung: "For Happy Together, I thought we already had enough footage, what else do we need? I felt homesick, I was very depressed, and sometimes we didn't work for 3 months, we just stopped, we got stuck in the script. All I did every day was getting drunk, and that's what he wanted, since the character had to be very depressed. That was some kind of torture! Or a new kind of method acting!"

What experience was it to discover In the Mood for Love before the Cannes screening?

Leung: "It was like... shit, you know! (laughs) We never have an idea of what the idea is going to be like before the premiere. So every time I try to find out the missing parts, where is that scene, where is that now? I was so confused ... I saw the film several times. I could understand afterwards!"

Cheung: "It was very frightening. We had this small screening room in Cannes, the night before the real screening. Because the next day we had to understand questions, so it just made sense that we saw the film first! (laughs) I was really shocked. The whole thing was so light, so quiet, the mood of the film really surprised me, he chose bits and pieces like a jigsaw puzzle and made another little picture from them."

How much footage never made it to the final version?

Cheung: "About 6 hours."

Did Wong Kar-wai actually shoot scenes of his following project while shooting In the Mood for Love?

Leung: "Yes, he did some scenes. I had to go to Tokyo for another film and in between he shot a few scenes for 2046, the futuristic movie."