#Rouge胭脂扣

[dailylesliec]

[TRANSLATION] Art and Piece Issue 16 - Stanley Kwan about Leslie Cheung

“Seeing Leslie with my own eyes made me realise there really are some guys in this world who are truly beautiful.”

BORN ELEGANT AND FLAMBOYANT TO THE END

Stanley Kwan - Director of "Rouge"

I am Stanley Kwan. I directed the film “Rouge, " where Gor- gor and Mui Jeh (Anita) starred. I really miss having these old friends around - just watching their movies or listening to their music brings all the memories back. Leslie and Anita both had their Unique Elegance and were a perfect match for Rouge. I saw Leslie’s most beautiful side, and at the same time bore witness to the trembling of his two hands.

I first worked with Gor-gor in “Nomad” directed by Patrick Tam. I was the assistant director. Seeing Leslie with my own eyes made me realise there really are some guys in this world who are truly beautiful. I was initially not attached to “Rouge” - Golden Harvest had initially set Terry Tong as the director and even the cast had been finalised, with the actors being Anita, Adam Cheng, Andy Lau and Cherie Chung. But the script took too much time, and Director Tong had other projects to attend to. Excluding Anita, the whole cast left one by one as well, and I took over the film. I thought long and hard about who could play Master Twelve. At the time Ekin Cheng was just starting out. After seeing him work with Lawrence Ng, I wondered if I should cast Lawrence for the role. Ah Mui saw me struggling and suggested, “What if I tell Mr Ho (TN: the film producer & founder of Golden Harvest) that I’ll do a movie for Cinema City in exchange for Leslie doing this film?”

Leslie was very creative. As an example, he and Anita were really close, so in a scene where they were smoking opium, he put his hand on her chest. He knew she wouldn’t object or say anything, and she too thought that was what the scene needed. I could feel the tacit understanding between the two of them - it was easy to see working on “Rouge”, and I found that they didn’t even need to discuss much. In 2001, I began work on a film titled “Scenery Against the Light”. Both Leslie and Anita expressed their interest in the story and contents of the film, but I’ve never been efficient in working on scripts. By 2002 when I reached out to both of them again, they both had their own issues even before the script was ready. I was shocked.

I usually saw Leslie on occasions where a few of us were doing a gathering at his house or an event arranged by Florence, but we’d always talk. We had a lot in common to talk about, not necessarily deeply personal things like family, but we talked a lot about our personal feelings and thoughts about living, including our careers: Leslie also “suffered” a lot to get to where he was in his career. The first time I found out about his hands trembling was at a dinner gathering too. Originally, “Lust, Caution” was going to be directed by Edward Yang instead of Ang Lee. He thought Leslie was really suitable for the role, so I arranged a dinner gathering for him in late 2002.

The dinner was very casual and we kept talking even after the meal had ended. Leslie tucked his hands under his thighs. His whole body was trembling. He was paying attention, but his attentiveness... it was almost like he was in a trance. After Director Yang left, I asked Leslie why he was so nervous. Leslie said he wasn’t scared of Edward Yang, but I still saw his shaking hands. He never explained why.

That incident is nowhere near my most unforgettable memory of Leslie though. The most vivid picture in my mind is the scene in “Rouge” where he turns around and smiles after walking up the stairs. When I watched the playback, a voice behind me suddenly asked, “Really pretty, right?” Before I turned around, I could already tell it was Leslie’s voice. It really was very pretty - that elegant, playful feeling was really something else. He was brilliant.

His brilliance remains unchanged even throughout these 20 years. Be it Leslie or Anita, fans are still willing to see them as friends. I, too, don’t think they’re that far from us. It’s just like they went abroad to study, to live, to spend their days. When the 4K restored version of “Rouge” was broadcast in cinemas earlier, I went to go watch it again. It really feels like I didn’t film the movie thirty-something years ago. It’s like I was still filming last week.

Translated by me (@dailylesliec on Twitter/Tumblr), do not repost without credit. If you like this translation, consider following me or buying me a Ko-fi. For the formatted PDF version of this article, click here.

[neoyan]

胭脂扣 导演 关锦鹏

[manderley]

Anita Mui & Leslie Cheung in Rouge (1987) -  胭脂扣

[dailyworldcinema]

ROUGE ‘胭脂扣’ dir. Stanley Kwan

[filmreel]

ROUGE ‘胭脂扣’ dir. Stanley Kwan

[videoclubs]

ROUGE ‘胭脂扣’ dir. Stanley Kwan

[beautifultimes-beautifulplaces]

Rouge 胭脂扣 (1987); dir. Stanley Kwan

[potteresque-ire]

A very young Stanley Kwan 關錦鵬 (right) directing Leslie Cheung 張國榮 (left) and Anita Mui 梅艷芳 (middle) for Rouge 胭脂扣 (1987). Kwan would win the Best Director title for the film at the Hong Kong Film Awards.

Stanley Kwan 關錦鵬 is not only a famous director from Hong Kong, but also the first well-known openly gay figure in Hong Kong entertainment. He came out of the closet in 1996 (before Leslie Cheung, who did so in 1997), in the documentary he directed for the British Film Institute named Yang ± Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema 男生女相：華語電影之性別. His works had garnered accolades for their in-depth portrayal of female characters, at the time when women in local movies often did little more than being pretty and screaming a lot.

(Under the cut: Director Kwan's own words on one of his most famous works and a gay film classic in Chinese-language cinema, Lan Yu (2001), in 2022 after BL culture has entered mainstream)

Most BL fans know Director Kwan via his gay-themed film Lan Yu 藍宇 (2001), about the eponymous Bejing university student falling in love with a wealthy, closeted businessman, Chen Handong. The film, based on a popular online novel Beijing Story 北京故事, has remained censored in mainland China for its queer content and its mentions of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. Its fate of being perennially censored was never a surprise—the film was shot in Beijing in secret, with the crew pretending to be shooting commercials around the capital. Digital filming also didn't exist then, and so the 100,000 ft + of film had to be smuggled out of China later to be developed.

Lan Yu was a project about love. Of love.

The poster of Lan Yu in Cannes Film Festival (left), Hong Kong (center), Taiwan (right), at the time of its original release.

In 2022, Lan Yu celebrated its 20th anniversary with a 4K remastered version. Among the interviews of Director Kwan made for the celebration was one by The Initium 端傳媒, during which Kwan shared some of his views on Lan Yu, in the context of how public reception of queer media has changed over the years after the film's release.

These views may deviate from what some fans, especially those in BL circles, would expect. Precisely because of that, however, I'm posting them here. After all, maybe, hopefully, Kwan will collaborate with Dd (and Gg) one day. Maybe, fans like ourselves will interact with Kwan on social media spaces one day.

I hope Kwan's views will be kept in mind, considered and respected. Due to the length of the full interview **, I'm only translating the two parts that are relevant (lazy turtle here 😊):

1.

《藍宇》 雖為華語電影同志片的經典，但過去廿年，關錦鵬卻在不少訪談中提過，電影改編自當年於大陸風行一時的網絡同志小說《北京故事》，而最初他其實並不喜歡那篇小說。

「原著基本上是用偷窺角度去看一段同志關係，特別是集中描寫男體的情色關係，有很多露骨的性愛場面。作者本身是知道這些描寫會令小說受歡迎。」關錦鵬接著說：「但在拍這部電影前，我在 1996 年已經出櫃。而我覺得作為一名同志導演，就更不應該去消費這個題材，所以當我看到原著小說將情色描寫，譬如肛交、口交的過程放大，當時我便跟製片人說，如果要原封不動將小說內容拍出來，我就不做了。」

Although Lan Yu is a classic Chinese-language gay film, in many interviews in the past 20 years, Kwan has mentioned that the film was adapted from the online gay novel Beijing Story, popular in mainland China at the time, and that he actually didn't like the novel at first. "The original novel basically looks at a gay relationship from a voyeuristic point of view, especially the erotic relationship between male bodies, and there are many explicit sex scenes. The author (of the novel) himself knows that these descriptions will make the novel popular."

Kwan continued, "But before making this movie, I had been out of the closet since 1996. And I thought, as a gay director, I shouldn't exploit this subject, so when I saw the original novel expanding, zooming in on the eroticism -- the processes of anal sex and oral sex, for example -- I told the producer at the time that if the novel's content is to be filmed without changes, I won't do it.”

2. 在《藍宇》面世的年代，電影確實意識大膽。但二���年後，當電影得以重新修復，社會氛圍其實亦有了翻天覆地的轉變。近年不但多了同志題材的作品，甚至大行其道，人人消費，成為一種時令的商業元素。譬如人氣男團會拍 BL 電視劇，而過去幾年的華語電影節，最快售罄的場次，都一定是同志電影。 此情此景，在《藍宇》剛上映的年代簡直不可思議，電影當年在香港的票房談不上亮眼，普羅大眾對同性戀故事有所抗拒，而本身就是同志的觀眾，想看卻不敢���票入場，怕被旁人標籤。二十年後世界變了樣，甚至總會看到「腐女」在 BL 電影的宣傳海報前打卡拍照。關錦鵬笑說：「是呀，前陣子的確有朋友跟我說，她其實是一名腐女。腐女族群喜歡看男同志電影，但到底喜歡看什麼呢？她某程度上都承認，想看的就是身體，是兩個好看的男人身體如何做愛。」 然而，這恰恰就是他當初對執導《藍宇》有所卻步的顧慮。當同志題材今日已走入主流，變成一種受歡迎的商業元素，關錦鵬則仍然有所警惕，跟潮流保持距離：「可能有些腐女都會喜歡《藍宇》，但我想未必完全是她們那杯茶。它真正要說的是兩個男人從色情買賣演變成一段感情關係，尤其是魏紹恩替我改編劇本之後，陳捍東這個角色，在我看來不一定是男同志，而是他在藍宇身上找到一些連自己都不知道的感覺。」 但關錦鵬也承認，從好的方向去看，在 BL 作品蔚然成風的助力之下，至少令同志以及 LGBT 性少數族群，相對容易被今日的大眾主流接受：「這是令人開心的。近幾年，特別是年輕人，確實會用比較開放的態度去對待 LGBT 族群。」稍頓，關錦鵬解釋道：「換個說法，關於 LGBT 議題的重點，現在就不再放在色情之上，而更多是感情關係，甚至是性少數族群認清自己身份之後，於生活上如何面對社會。那起碼是朝著一個正確的方向。」 In the era when Lan Yu was released, the film was indeed bold in its ideology. Twenty years later, however, at the time when the film gets its restoration, the social atmosphere has actually undergone earth-shaking changes. In recent years, not only have there been more gay-themed works, they have even become very popular and consumed by all, becoming a kind of fashionable commercial element. For example, popular boyband members are willing to make BL TV dramas, and in the past few years of Chinese-speaking film festivals, the fastest sold-out shows have all been gay movies.

[Pie note: The reporter was unlikely to be referring to Gg and Dd with their mention of "popular boyband members". Instead, they were probably thinking of Edan Lo and Anson Lo from Hong Kong's local boyband MIRROR, who starred in the BL drama Ossan's Love.]  

This phenomenon is unbelievable in the era when Lan Yu was first released. The box office of the film in Hong Kong couldn't be said to be impressive. The general public resisted gay stories [Pie note: Hong Kong hadn't decriminalised homosexual relationships until 1991, 10 years before], and the audience who were gay wanted to watch it but didn't dare to purchase tickets, for fear of being labeled by others. Twenty years later, the world has changed -- BL fans can be seen photographing themselves in front of the promotional posters of BL movies.

Kwan smiled and said, "Yes, a friend told me a while ago that she's actually a "rotten woman" (Pie note: = woman BL fan, translated from the Japanese term fujoshi). The "rotten women" group likes to watch gay movies, but what do they like to watch? She admitted, to a certain extent, that it's the body. It's the body, how two good-looking men's bodies make love."

And yet, this was precisely the concern that made Kwan hesitant to direct Lan Yu at the beginning. As gay themes enter the mainstream and become a popular commercial element, Kwan has remained vigilant, and has kept his distance from the trend: "Maybe some "rotten women" enjoy Lan Yu, but I don't think (the film) is entirely their cup of tea. What the film really wanted to express was how two men evolved from a transactional sex relationship to an emotional relationship, especially after Wei Shaoen adapted the script for me. The character of Chen Handong, in my opinion, didn't necessarily have to be a gay man; instead, he found on Lan Yu a feeling that even he himself couldn't understand.”

But Kwan also admitted that, from a better perspective, with the aid of popular BL works, it has become relatively easy for gays and LGBT sexual minorities to find acceptance in today's mainstream: "This is a happy thing to see. In recent years, especially young people have indeed treated the LGBT community with a more open attitude.” After a short pause, Kwan explained: “In other words, the focus of LGBT issues is now no longer on salacity, but more on emotional relationships, and even, on how sexual minorities face society in their daily lives after recognising their (sexual) identities. At least it's moving in the right direction.”

** None of you see this footnote, but a copy of the interview without a paywall can be found here. 😊

[theersatzcowboy]

Rouge / 胭脂扣 (1987)

Love doesn’t end with death, it just transforms. Two taken-too-soon Cantopop icons (and real-life close friends) bring real intimacy to this gorgeous ghost / love story, which switches between 1930s and 1980s Hong Kong.

Director: Stanley Kwan

Cinematographer: Bill Wong

Starring: Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung, Alex Man, Irene Wan

[qilingxiong]

Film Tracking

Sorted by region, then most to least recent. Blue indicates personal favourites.

香港:

2024: • 破地獄 | The Last Dance (2024) • 幻愛 | Beyond the Dream (2019) • 柔道龍虎榜 | Throw Down (2004) • 意外 | Accident (2009) • 失衡凶間之罪與殺 | Tales from the Occult: Body and Soul (2022) • 武替道 | Stuntman (2024) • 九龍城寨之圍城 | Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024) • 愛奴 | Intimate Confessions of A Chinese Courtesan (1972) 2023: • 狂舞派3 | The Way We Keep Dancing (2020) • 無間道 | Infernal Affairs (2002) • 香港製造 | Made in Hong Kong (1997) • 英雄本色 | A Better Tomorrow (1986) • 投奔怒海 | Boat People (1982) • 胭脂扣 | Rouge (1988) • 精武門 | Fist of Fury (1972) • 大醉俠 | Come Drink With Me (1966) • 梁山伯與朱英台 | The Love Eterne (1963) 2022: • 花樣年華 | In The Mood For Love (2000) • 春光乍洩 | Happy Together (1997) • 2046 (2004)

台灣:

2024: • 我在這裡等你 | A Balloon's Landing (2024)

大陸:

2024: • 負負得正 | Land of Broken Hearts (2024) 2023: • 詭愛 | Haunting Love (2012) • 消失的她 | Lost in the Stars (2023) • 重啓之蛇骨佛蛻 | Reunion 2: Escape from the Monstrous Snake (2021) • 重啓之深淵疑冢 | Reunion 2: Mystery of the Abyss (2022) 2022: • 無名 | Hidden Blade (2023) 2021: • 英雄 | Hero (2002) • 晴雅集 | The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity (2020)

[thissongisamovie]

胭脂扣 [Rouge] (1988, 關錦鵬 [Stanley Kwan])

[laiqualaurelote]

tag 9 people you want to get to know better!

tagged by @macpye​, thank you for the tag!

Three Ships of All Time:

I swear I give different answers to this every time I’m asked. This time I’m going to go with Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries), Arthur/Eames (Inception) and Frank Castle/Karen Page (Daredevil/The Punisher).

First Ever Ship:

Éowyn/Faramir from The Lord of the Rings. “It reminds me of Númenor” is such a line.

Last Song:

Downtown by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis ft. Melle Mel, Grandmaster Caz, Kool Moe Dee and Eric Nally - @auntieclimactic​ blazed into my Discord with this bop and there is a lot going on in it. Mostly mopeds. 

Last Film:

胭脂扣 (Rouge), a 1987 film by Stanley Kwan in which Anita Mui is a high-class courtesan in 1930s Hong Kong and Leslie Cheung is the wealthy playboy with whom she has a doomed romance and 53 years later she pops up as a ghost haunting some poor journalists in the 1980s. It’s very beautiful and tragic. They’re very beautiful and tragic.

Currently Reading:

I’m usually reading multiple books at once. Presently I’m at the beginning of The Hyacinth Girl by Lyndall Gordon, about T. S. Eliot and the four women who influenced his writing (most notably said “hyacinth girl” Emily Hale); in the middle of Pulp III, the third out of five volumes in Shubigi Rao’s series on book preservation and destruction; and at the end of Vertical: The City From Satellites To Bunkers by Stephen Graham, which examines the built environment from a three-dimensional perspective, up and down. I’m also listening to the audiobook of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (evil mould: MY WORST NIGHTMARE).

Currently Watching:

Just got a free trial for Acorn TV so am powering through a Miss Fisher rewatch. Have also just finished Reservation Dogs, which I highly recommend.

Currently Consuming:

Vitamin C orange-flavoured gummies

Currently Craving:

Egg tarts, the Hong Kong style ones. I recently had something that was purportedly a Chinese egg tart but was actually sesame-flavoured? A travesty.

I’m afraid I’ve done too many of these of late to have people left to tag - I hate to inflict tagging on others! - but if you would like to do this please do! I always want to get to know people better.

[hong-kong-art-man]

Anita Mui In Anita: What Made Her A Hong Kong Super Superstar: 1963-2003

What makes a superstar? The answer is hungry. Most people are hungry, but not hungry enough. Superstars, first and foremost, are self-driven with Lorentz force to succeed. They are assertive and aggressive. Hard work and sacrifice run in the blood.

A superstar is born with natural charms. He or she has the unconquerable stealth to captivate others by connecting emotionally.

We are drawn to superstars. We cannot get enough of them. For the superstars in Hong Kong, there were 2, Leslie Cheung (張國榮) who died in April 2003 and Anita Mui (梅艷芳) who also died in December of the same year, that we are never able to pinpoint what single aspect making them so powerfully enthralling, but they spiritually stay with us forever.

Leslie and Anita were overwhelmingly popular in Asia in the 80s. They were good friends and often together. They sang and acted like inborn teammates surreptitiously admiring each other. One should not miss their best film made in 1988 called Rouge (胭脂扣) in which a handsome rich young man and a mesmerizing girl prostitute fell in love but as they stood against the world, suicide became the sad option for them. Leslie got a very good boyfriend but for some reason that nobody could explain, he jumped down from a hotel at the age of 46. Contrastingly, Anita wanted love despairingly but she could get none. She died alone of cervical cancer at the age of 40. Life is a situation in which there is a weird force of nature that we cannot run away.

Anita (梅艷芳) is a 2021 Hong Kong biographical film about this Cantopop superstar Anita Mui directed by my junior schoolmate of Ying Wa College Longman Leung, telling in fine details her heart-rending life from childhood until her last moments. The film features an ensemble cast inclusive of Louis Koo and Gordon Lam in supporting roles. Production of the biopic started as early as in 2010s when Bill Kong, president of Edko Films, bravely decided to invest in this unusual project to commemorate his unforgettable friend Mui’s eventful existence. It took 6 years or more to finish such an intensively charming historical figure’s drama. Luckily, the film has nabbed the top spot at the Asian box office. Longman told me, “Pain is the first path to accomplishing. To make such a nostalgic film, years of research had to be spent on the fact-finding of stories, characters, costume, makeup, props, music and street scenes. Oh, my god!”

Not having a husband, Anita’s mother, who was an entertainment manager, took the 4-year-old Anita and her elder sister to sing in a local amusement park called Lai Yuen in the 1960s. Anita received no formal education. A long succession of boring days and nights of singing made her nobody. In 1982, when Anita was 18, she won a TV singing contest organized by the biggest station HKTVB because of her exceptionally attractive performance. She got an adorable voice which is low-pitched, unisex, dramatic and confident, and soon became a delight in the sweeping speed of 2 years that people in Hong Kong were in awe of. She was the Asia’s counterpart of Madonna enjoying the same degree of popularity. She honestly admitted that the need for a personable and greater man was like a fire that she could not put out. Pitiably, she was defeated by love, either due to being mismatched or bad timing, again, again and again…. All her love stories, together with supporting juicy photos, were talks of the town.

Her region-wide story is her secret date with the top singer in Japan Masahiko Kondo(近藤真彦) around 1984 and Masahiko did turn up in Anita’s funeral to bid farewell in 2004. The other piece of news which was hot off the press was her quarrel with a man of mysterious background and the incident deteriorated into the mysterious murder of 2 men apparently involved in it. This unhappy conflict fatalistically marks her gravity gradually downslope in the singing career. Anita thus switched to devote more time to serving the community and performing industries as a volunteer. She was the Chairman of Hong Kong Performing Artistes Guild.

I had been the Honourary Legal Advisor of the Guild for many years ago and so worked with Anita. She talked about business slowly and softly. She fixed her eyes on yours firmly and never wavered her belief. She celebrated many evening parties in her huge house but I, of course, was not adequately good to be invited.

It was said that the most important tool that one has in his entire arsenal is integrity. In matters of principle, Anita Mui always stood like a rock. Her natural leadership is the charisma of getting all of us to do good things that she wanted done. I really would like to tell you more about Anita but I do need a long memory. Thanks to the touching movie Anita for reminding me of beautiful things that I missed out and took up such memories with the present Hong Kong. Alas, Hong Kong is not the same anymore; but I love being in a city with good weather.

MLee

Chinese Version 中文版: https://www.patreon.com/posts/mei-yan-fang-yu-59082982?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copy_to_clipboard&utm_campaign=postshare

“Anita” Movie Trailer  https://youtu.be/RBttfe-bXI4  Acknowledgement-888LAB

Anita Mui Music Video  https://youtu.be/bN8SKOZN7c0  Acknowledgement-637 TWS

Anita Mui, Danny Chan, Leslie Cheung and  Roman Tam  https://youtu.be/VTc-6puXcDo  Ackowledgement-monster09gag

Anita Mui Concert  https://youtu.be/CY4Ri9MwDok  Acknowledgment-LoveForAnitaMui

Anita Mui Concert  https://youtu.be/pZmLLbfdt_w  Acknowledgment-GKing Choi

Madonna “Material Girl” MV  https://youtu.be/6p-lDYPR2P8  Acknowledgement-Madonna

Carrie Koo song “Never Ending Love”  https://youtu.be/hSUKoUFy99w  Acknowledgement-Hor Mooi Yit

Siu Ming Sing  https://youtu.be/xtzrRdvR5BY  Acknowledgement-albert chu

[manderley]

Anita Mui in Rouge (1987) - 胭脂扣

[icedteadrinker]

Anita Mui in Rouge (1987) dir. Stanley Kwan

[maggiecheungs]

Anita Mui as Fleur in Rouge (1987) dir. Stanley Kwan