TONYLEUNG.INFO
Discuss Tony Leung with fellow fans!
 
Welcome to the Discussion Board

 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist    ProfileProfile    Log inLog in   RegisterRegister 
  Log in to check your private messages Log in to check your private messages   
Click here to go to Archival Tony Board (2003-2012)

The Leung view

 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    www.tonyleung.info Forum Index -> Tony Leung Articles
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
Sandy
Site Admin


Joined: 19 Dec 2002
Posts: 1424

PostPosted: Mon Sep 16, 2013 11:42 pm    Post subject: The Leung view Reply with quote

The Leung view
Authors: Ryan Gilbey
Source: Sunday Times, The. 02/29/2004.
Section: Features, Interview, pg. 16 - Culture



He's a megastar in Hong Kong, and his new film, Infernal Affairs, is set for a Scorsese remake. So why does Tony Leung just want to be ignored, asks RYAN GILBEY

The Chinese thriller Infernal Affairs, which has just opened in Britain,
deserves to be celebrated for a number of reasons. When it was released in Hong
Kong in late 2002, its success gave an unexpected boost to the city's
down-in-the-dumps movie industry. A prequel and a sequel quickly followed,
while Martin Scorsese is slated to direct the US remake.

The film also rescues the modern policier from the heavy hands of Michael Mann.

This tale of two moles - a gangster posing as a cop, and a cop who has
infiltrated the Triads - is not only half the length of Heat, it also gets the
job done with more panache and less brooding.

The best reason to see Infernal Affairs, however, is to bask in the charms of
its dynamic star, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, who has been one of Asian cinema's most
prized and popular actors for more than a decade. On screen, in films such as
In the Mood for Love and Happy Together, he has an authentic hint of the
matinee idol about him. In person, on a drab Sunday in a London hotel suite, he
is more transparently vulnerable, though he still exudes charisma and
classiness, even in a white jumper and baggy blue jeans. He has brown, soulful
eyes and betrays no sign of having just stepped off the red-eye from Hong Kong,
nor of being 41. A feathery moustache that could be sneezed away suggests a boy
trying to pass for a man.

For Infernal Affairs, in which he plays the cop who has sacrificed a decade of
his life to pass as a Triad member, Leung resolved to stay in the shadows.

"Originally, I wanted to make him wear a smile," he explains softly, "because
undercover characters are usually sad and tense. But that didn't work.

So I decided to be as flat as I could." He has played an undercover cop
before, in John Woo's Hard Boiled, where he was called upon to snarl and dodge
bullets. "In that film, you could see me acting," he says. "Here, I tried just
to be quiet." It was a wise move. His most affecting moments in Infernal
Affairs occur when he seems to be doing nothing much, such as his clandestine
salute to a police funeral procession. "Yeah, yeah, I like that scene too," he
enthuses, sounding like one of his own excitable fans.

About the Infernal Affairs phenomenon, he is less enthusiastic. A restaurant
named after the film opened recently in Hong Kong, while a press campaign urged
audiences to see the movie in order to express their love for the city. There
is a protracted silence when I ask him about the sequels. Eventually, he
murmurs that Part 2, in which he does not appear, is "not bad", while Part 3,
in which he does, is "quite complicated". I don't think those quotes will make
it onto the posters.

Possibly, the trilogy feels like old news to him. His most pressing obligation
is currently to 2046, the futuristic new film by the brilliant and febrile
auteur Wong Kar Wai. The pair have made six movies together, beginning with
Days of Being Wild in 1991, but when I joke that Leung belongs to Wong, he
gently corrects me. "We belong to each other," he smiles. He seems energised by
their relationship, despite the fact that Wong's exhausting productions
typically begin without a script and can spill over into many months - or
longer in the case of 2046, which has been shooting erratically for four years
now.

The movie has been described by Wong as a love story between humans and
androids, with elements of Carmen and Madam Butterfly. Perhaps we should take
that with a fistful of salt - after all, as Leung explains, the director quite
happily misleads his own actors.

"When we were making In the Mood for Love, I asked him, 'What is this about?'
He told me, 'It's a story of terrible revenge. You are seeking revenge on this
woman because her husband stole your wife.'" If you have seen the finished
film, you will know that this is like describing The Seventh Seal as a
frat-house comedy. "I certainly didn't see any revenge in there," giggles
Leung. On the contrary, it is a tentative love story that manages, even at its
most profound, to feel gossamer-light.

Wong is clearly a demanding film-maker - Leung admits to having "run out of
batteries", while crew members on his films refer to "the casualty list"
instead of the cast list. But no other director has better exploited Leung's
melancholy mixture of confidence and fragility. Wong cast him as a lovelorn cop
in Chungking Express; as the heartbroken gay doorman at an Argentinian tango
club in Happy Together, a kind of Last Tango in Buenos Aires; and as the
cuckold, suited and booted but crying on the inside, who finds himself
unexpectedly In the Mood for Love.

The conflicts in Leung's on-screen persona have some basis in real life. He
was, he tells me, a naughty, rambunctious child until his father walked out.
Then, at the age of six, he withdrew into himself, becoming especially prickly
whenever the topic of family life was raised at school. "I suppressed my
emotions for so long," he says. "I used to talk to the mirror. I was very much
like my character in Chungking Express. I had nobody else to confide in, and I
didn't want to look weak, so I saved all my problems for that mirror." A bright
spot came in the form of his weekly trips to the cinema. "My mother's family
were big movie fans," he says. "We'd go every Sunday, 12 until six. I saw
everything." When he encounters those relatives now, they invariably coo over
him. "Oh, we never thought you'd be a superstar," they say, tousling his hair,
to which he responds coyly: "I'm not a superstar. I'm an actor."

His insistence on this distinction exemplifies the high regard in which he
holds his craft. "Acting has always been a way for me to express the emotions I
had buried. If I hadn't acted, I would have gone insane. In my acting class, I
could let out my real tears and everyone thought it was the char-acter. But no,
it was me."

It wasn't only those effusive aunts and uncles who had Leung pegged as a
superstar. Since his early twenties, when he starred in two hit television
series, he has been unable to walk freely through his native city. Once he had
conquered movies - and cultivated a singing career on the side - like most Hong
Kong actors, he graduated to the top of the paparazzi's wish list. "Life is
unreal for me," he complains. "I am always under surveillance by photographers.
If I go into a shop, I have privilege.

I never have to reserve a table for dinner. They can always find one for me:
the best one." I remind him that most people would think this was great. "It is
great," he concedes. "But I need to live like ordinary people if I am going to
improve my acting.

I need sometimes to be ignored."

Perhaps, then, he might consider a change of scenery. It's not as though he
hasn't received offers to work in other countries. Scripts arrive regularly
from France, America and Australia, but he hasn't found the right one yet. "If
I get something interesting, why not?" he muses. For now, though, he is
concentrating on the immediate future. Later this year, he hopes to appear in a
thriller by Tran Anh Hung, who directed Leung in the bizarre Cyclo. "It is
about a cop, a serial killer, Jesus and a beggar," he says serenely. "I play
Jesus."

Perhaps he can slip into character early and perform the miracle of getting
Wong to complete 2046 in time for its prem-iere at Cannes in May.

"I asked him recently, 'Are we nearly finished?' He told me, 'Almost there.'"
He lets out an exasperated sigh and rocks back in his seat, gripped by glee,
mild hysteria, or both.

Copyright (C) The Sunday Times, 2004
Back to top
View user's profile
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    www.tonyleung.info Forum Index -> Tony Leung Articles All times are GMT - 8 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group