Father Geek here with terrible news for fans of Asian Cinema... Chinese actor Leslie Cheung, perhaps best known to the readers of this site for his role in "A Better Tomorrow" died after falling off the 24th floor of Hong Kong's landmark Mandarin Oriental hotel, located in the business district, early in the evening, Tuesday, April 1st. The actor and Cantonese pop star also left an apparant suicide note, according to some reports.
One of China's most popular actors and one of the few to play openly gay characters Cheung made his breakthrough in 1986 with John Woo's great gangster film "A Better Tomorrow," in which he starred opposite Chow Yun-Fat. He followed that with the popular films "Rouge," "A Better Tomorrow II," "A Chinese Ghost Story," "Once a Thief," "The Bride with White Hair," "Temptress Moon," "Chinese Feast" and "Farwell My Concubine," the latter of which received a number of awards, including the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Speaking for the entire staff of AICN I can say he will be sorely missed, he was a fantastic talent who added greatly to the quality of every film he appeared in. To see a listing of his 60+ feature films Click Right Here.
Here's what one of our readers sent in to Father Geek today about Leslie...
Speaking for the entire staff of AICN I can say he will be sorely missed, he was a fantastic talent who added greatly to the quality of every film he appeared in. To see a listing of his 60+ feature films Click Right Here.
Here's what one of our readers sent in to Father Geek today about Leslie...
It's a sad sad day for asian film lovers. IMDB is picking up on a story that's apparently been all over Hong Kong that Leslie Cheung, one of China's greatest actors, has committed suicide at 46. Here's the link http://us.imdb.com/PeopleNews/
I first noticed Cheung in Chen Kaige's epic Farewell My Concubine (1993's Palm D'or winner), one of my favorite movies. The "Chinese new wave" produced some of the best and most interesting films of the 90's and Cheung was an integral part. His performance in Concubine as a man practically raised on the stage, forced into the role of Concubine to his best friend's King, is the glue that holds the movie together. He plays the gender questions central to the role in a way that is convincing and undistracting. More importantly he conveys the passion of the character himself, obessed with the fantasies of the stage while the real world of 20th century China is literally collapsing all around him. In the same way that Dieyi becomes the concubine, so does Cheung become Dieyi, a complex part that completely blurs the line between stage/screen/reality/whatever.
Watching Cheung again in Kaige's follow-up, Temptress Moon, I was astounded to see him in a role that was a complete 180 degree reversal - a masculine gangster in bad need of anger management classes. The movie flopped but I knew we had a real discovery on our hands.
Of course, it wasn't a "discovery" at all. Leslie Cheung was a superstar in Hong Kong and all over Asia. Hong Kong seems to have a weird talent for turning models and vapid pop stars into screen legends of enormous talent (see Maggie Cheung and both Tony Leungs for more examples). No matter where your interests in the far east lie, you should recognize Leslie from somewhere. He was Chow Yun Fatt's do-gooder kid brother in John Woo's For A Better Tomorrow, the sword slinging hero in Ronnie Yu's The Bride With White Hair, the bumbling tax collector in Ching Siu Tung's A Chinese Ghost Story, and he even appeared in more "serious" movies like Stanley Kwan's Rouge.
Perhaps his greatest longevity, though, will be his collaborations with Wong Kar-Wai. Now that Wong has been named one of Sight and SOund's greatest directors of the 90's, his work should be getting more attention. Leslie was the lead in 91's Days of Being Wild, the first movie to truly bear the marks of Wong's style. His performance was intended as a kind of Chinese James Dean and though the film itself was a huge financial flop, it garnered a lot of attention from critics. He would win his first ever Hong Kong film award for best actor and had established himself as a legitimate screen talent as well as a box office mega-draw. He would later go on to star in Wong's Ashes of Time and drew a lot of acclaim for his performance in 1997's Happy Together, another gender bender.
Simply put, Leslie Cheung was involved in some of the greatest productions to ever come out of China, both on the mainland and in Hong Kong. He was convincing in both mandarin and Cantonese speaking roles. He was always known for somewhat erratic behavior off-sreen, once publically denouncing Ashes of Time: "I don't understand a word of it" and when probed about his sexuality in Stanley Kwan's documentary on gender in Chinese cinema Yin/Yang, he responded with the off-putting remark "Audiences only come to see my pretty face, they don't care about my private life."
On a day when we also lost Michael Jeter, Cheung's death comes as a real shock. Actors who combine versatility with a genuine screen presence will always be in short supply. He left a suicide note but its contents have not been published. Whatever the reason for his death, he will be missed.
Palpatine out.
