Peking Opera Blues

In Peking Opera Blues, director Tsui Hark takes us back to 1913 China: daughter of the general Tsao-Wan [Lin Ching Hsia] is torn between the love for her father, who plans to secure a loan from the Europeans in order to aid president Yuan, and the support for a rebellious group, who see in Yuan's leadership a peril for the republic and therefore plan to unmask him by stealing the loan papers and handing them to the congress.

The movie follows the deeds of three women, different by social class (one is daughter of the general, another one a greedy street musician whose goal is to get rich and leave China, the third one a theatre performer - or, more precisely, an aspiring theatre performer, as acting at the time was only allowed to men) and, yet, put together by Fate. As the three eventually join forces, we get to see a lot of colorful Peking Opera performing, as well as amusing and endearing situations. The movie, indeed, deals with the problems of mutual trust and loyalty, especially in those situations when the ideals come to clash against the personal ambitions.

The only aspect of the movie I was a bit put off by is the ease with which the group is always able to escape the most dangerous situations. Even the hardest-to-die Bruce Willis would have been puzzled on how to leave the mansion... and Spiderman himself would need more than one try to leap successfully from a mansion to the top of a tower! Apart from this, Peking Opera Blues is a beautiful movie, more over enriched by a gripping soundtrack, dazzling theatre choreography and, most of all, an intense story that is sure to make you smile with joy at some moments and shiver with terror in other circumstances. 8/10

Really enjoyable film in so many ways ... funny, clever, exciting, thrill ride from start to finish. What the plot is or means we may never exactly know [what is that coveted document everyone is willing to die for, anyway? and how is the second general connected to the first?], but we get the basic story idea. Subtitles are such poor translations to make them added humor. I know this doesn't sound like a winner, but trust me - a bonafied "don't miss" feature.

Before I saw this movie, I had always considered Chinese opera rather boring. Now I would be willing to give it a chance. Not that any Chinese opera would be like this movie. Even though the movie is full of amazing stunts and also very funny, the film doesn't veer in the realm of ridiculous like a lot of movies in this genre do. Part of the credit must go to the three convincing female leads, each one with a different strength. Director Tsui Hark also should be given credit by keeping the movie together even while our three heroines are pursuing different goals (success, greed and justice). A fun movie for all.

Opinion seems pretty evenly divided on PEKING OPERA BLUES. One camp regards it as possibly the best film to come out of Hong Kong in the last twenty years, while the other camp thinks it's "stoopid".

Oddly, I come down somewhere between the two.

The first thing to understand is that POB is NOT a kung fu film. Yes, it has fighting in it. It has gunplay and it even has torture. But it is not a kung fu film. Mostly, it's a comedy adventure and those of us familiar with Hong Kong cinema will be well-aware that Hong Kong humour is, at best, an acquired taste, especially for us gwai-loh.

The next thing to understand is that its importance lies in the way it completely subverts the traditional gender roles in Chinese society. Some of this lies on the surface - in the way that Cherie Chung's character tries to get some stage acting in but is chastised by her father for it (at this time in China, all female roles on stage were played by men). Some of this lies in the subtext - in the way that Brigitte Lin's character is completely in charge of both her female and her male companions. And some of it lies in between - in the way that Lin dresses as a man (a long and honorable tradition in Chinese storytelling), but a bit odd here as she's not actually *disguised* as a man.

Add to this that all three female leads are headstrong women who know what they want (Brigitte Lin is just stronger, even, than the other two) and that the men are followers (Mark Cheng follows orders, then Brigitte, and Kwok Keung Cheung just follows Mark) and you can begin to see the impact this must have had when it came out in 1986 - years before we had Xena Warrior Princess or Veronica Mars.

Overall, I think POB is a good movie, though probably not a great one. When I watch it (I have the dodgy DeltaMac DVD release with the eccentric subtitling - "There's a girl. Knock her up!") I just can't help feeling that this should have been much better than it was.

Maybe if Tsui Hark were to do a remake today, POB would be the movie it always deserved to be ...

I do have to admit, I found this film quite hard to follow. It moves very fast and also feels like it changes tonally on a scene by scene basis. Eventually, I just had to accept that it was an espionage movie with like five main characters (three women and two guys, though the female characters are ultimately given the spotlight most of the time) doing various spy things, at first for their own reasons, and then more or less for similar reasons? Maybe? I got what they were doing, but the why was a little fuzzier.

Thankfully, it was still a fun time, even if it was also a bit overwhelming and sometimes confusing. It balances all its different genres and tonal shifts well, and that's something that can be appreciated even without following the story beat for beat.

It's also got some very good action scenes, which I was hoping for, given the director, Tsui Hark, is known for mastering the action genre (I've seen his Once Upon a Time in China movies, which were really good from memory).

And overall, I feel pretty confident in saying Peking Opera Blues was good. If it got a remaster with slightly better subtitles one day, I'd happily rewatch it, because I also think some of my confusion came from the English subtitles not being the best.