JIN ZHI YU YE
(GOLD BRANCHES, JADE LEAVES)
A film review by Donald Marion
Copyright 1995 Donald Marion
1994, color.
Scholar Films, Ltd, released by United Filmmakers Organization
Producer: Zeng Nanwei
Director: Chen Kexin
Cinematography: Chen Yijie
Screenplay: Ruan Shisheng
Music: Xu Yuan and Zhao Zengxi
Principal Cast: Leslie Cheung (Zhang Guorong) as Sam, Yuan Yungyi
as Wing, Liu Jialing as Rose
106 min.
In Mandarin, with Chinese and English subtitles.
Labeling this romantic comedy derivative would be like saying that King Kong was larger than your average gorilla. Basically a remake of VICTOR/VICTORIA, it borrows its basic premise from PYGMALION and its climax directly from WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. In between there are other scenes and situations that seem taken from American films, but at some point I began seeing them everywhere. For Leslie Cheung, most familiar to Western audiences as the "female" opera performer in FAREWELL TO MY CONCUBINE, this is another involvement with the theme of cross-dressing, although this time someone else is the dresser.
The movie's title is a classical euphemism for relatives of the Emperor, people who derived high social position and privilege from their kinship, no matter how distant. In this case, it refers to the entourage of Cheung's character, an "emperor" in his own milieu. In Hong Kong's "Cantopop" music world, Sam Koo is at the top: a star performer turned producer, he has become a contemporary legend. A renowned queenmaker (he only produces female singers) he has fame, money, and his protege/mistress, the beautiful and sexy Rose, has just won her third straight "Best Artist" award at Hong Kong's version of the Grammys. Out of boredom and a feeling of emptiness, Sam decides to nurture a new star, only this time the newcomer will be selected from open auditions of ordinary people, and for once will be a male.
One of those auditioning is a star-struck young woman named Wing who disguises herself as a man to get into the auditions. She has neither hope nor intention of winning: she just wants to get a closeup look at Sam and Rose, her ideal of the perfect couple. But Rose has grown angry at Sam for spending more time on the project than on her, and she challenges him to select Wing, the least talented of the lot. He accepts, and events develop from there. Wing is moved into Sam's home for the duration of "his" musical training, and soon becomes Rose's friend and confidant. Much of the comedy of course stems from gender confusion: Rose is convinced the newcomer is gay, since even her most blatant flirtations elicit no reponse; Sam's gay friends in the music world reach the opposite conclusion; and Sam becomes confused about his own preference, as he finds himself increasingly attracted to Wing. The outcome is never in doubt, of course, with a happy ending all around.
While not exactly classic comedy, this is a pleasant reminder that Hong Kong does turn out movies other than gangster or martial arts epics. Its likable characters provide some laughs and there are some nice songs from Leslie Cheung and Liu Jialing, each of whom was a top-ranked singer before turning to acting. Also worth mentioning is the subtitling, which can be unintentionally laughable in Asian films, but in this case is done in standard American idiom.
Rating on a scale of 1 to 10, with one being an absolute disaster and 10 being required viewing in film studies courses: 5.
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews