Something in the Woods – Valley of Shadows / Spoor

Shortly before this month’s film festival began, I ended a two-month binge on Hong Kong cinema with a journey back into the mysteries of the European woodlands, visiting Norway and Poland in the recent past of 2017. Coming on the heels of my folk horror documentary review, you’d be forgiven for thinking I planned it – and although there’s an argument to be made that these films could be considered as folk horror, my initial reference point was their potential classification as werewolf (or other shapeshifter) films. As to whether this is actually the case… well, it’s complicated.

There’s a tendency among some reviewers to reduce everything to plot, as if the way in which a story is told is completely irrelevant to its quality. Some people even deride films they haven’t seen purely on the basis of a Wikipedia plot summary – especially frustrating when that summary has been written by somebody who clearly didn’t understand what they were watching. It would be very easy to describe the plot of Valley of Shadows [Skyggenes dal] (2017) in a trite one-to-two sentence summary, but this would be doing the film a great disservice and would in no way convey the experience of watching it.

The focal character is Aslak (Adam Ekeli), a young boy living in rural Norway with his mother Astrid (Kathrine Fagerland). Their lives are defined in part by the absence of his older brother (never named), a junkie being pursued by the police for unspecified violent crimes. Aslak’s only friends are his dog Rapp and Lasse (Lennard Salamon) – an older boy who lives nearby and goes to the same school. Sneaking into a barn together to look at a dead sheep, the latest death in a spate of killings believed to have been committed by a wolf, Lasse tells Aslak that he believes the killer is actually a werewolf. Not long after the police inform Aslak’s mother of his brother’s death, Rapp goes running off into the woods chasing something… and still hasn’t returned by the evening. Unable to wake his mother the next morning, Aslak sets out into the woods to look for Rapp by himself.

As we experience the film from Aslak’s perspective, much of what is happening needs to be pieced together from sparse fragments of overheard dialogue, or completely dialogue-free stretches where we can see that adults are talking but can only guess what they’re saying from context. Zbigniew Preisner’s music is similarly sparse, creating an underscore of melancholy solitude resonating with the open landscape and muted colour palette – until Aslak begins his journey into the forest, at which point Lisa Gerrard’s gorgeous contralto bursts forth and the music swells majestically to match it, creating an eerie, almost fairytale-like atmosphere. It’s at this point that Marius Matzow Gulbrandsen’s cinematography really comes into its own, working in concert with the score to evoke the feel of a spiritual quest into the wilderness. I fell thoroughly in love with this section of the movie, sound and image working hand-in-hand to create something transcending a simple recitation of events. (I’ve been listening to the soundtrack while writing this review in order to bring the movie alive in my head again, which has been a mixed blessing, since it just reinforces the idea that my words are inadequate.)

I don’t really want to say anything more specific about the story beyond this point. On an emotional level, both Aslak and Astrid make at least some progress in coming to terms with their feelings of loss. While we do learn whether or not Rapp and Aslak will be reunited, the truth about Lasse’s werewolf hypothesis is left entirely up to the viewer – and I can easily imagine different people formulating their own “obvious” explanation about what really happened. Some people might find it all too straightforward, others might find it frustratingly inconclusive – but the film is bracketed with a definite emotional arc and the lack of any explanatory dialogue is, to me, a virtue. It’s not a film to be explained, it’s a film to be experienced – and that experience is something I’d be more than willing to repeat.

Valley of Shadows is the first feature from director Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen, coming six years after a series of award-winning short films. He co-wrote the screenplay with Clement Tuffreau, who had previously co-written a film called Sam Was Here (2016) but – more intriguingly to me – also directed NYC Foetus (2009), a documentary about Australian experimental musician Jim Thirlwell. Zbigniew Preisner has been a film composer since 1983, scoring major works by directors such as Krzysztof Kieślowski – Dekalog (1988), The Double Life of Veronique [Podwójne życie Weroniki] (1991), Three Colours: Blue [Trzy kolory: Niebieski] (1993), Three Colours: White [Trzy kolory: Biały] (1994), Three Colours: Red [Trzy kolory: Czerwony] (1994) – and Agnieszka Holland – Europa, Europa [Hitlerjunge Salomon] (1990), Olivier, Oliver (1992), The Secret Garden (1993). His musical collaborator Lisa Gerrard grew up in Melbourne among a range of musical influences, forming neoclassical darkwave/world music band Dead Can Dance with Brendan Perry in 1981 and contributing to a vast number of soundtracks over the years. I’m not familiar with Marius Matzow Gulbrandsen’s other work as a cinematographer, but the film which jumps out at me is Marko Raat’s Lumekuninganna (2010), a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen [Snedronningen] (1844) for adults.

Speaking of Agnieszka Holland, she’s responsible for the other half of my double bill – Spoor [Pokot] (2017), a faithful adaptation of Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead [Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych] (2009). The original title “Pokot” is a Polish hunting term that refers to the count of wild animals killed (and since I implicitly trashed Wikipedia earlier, it’s only fair to thank them for pointing this out), which as far as I’m aware has no English equivalent – but the substitute title “Spoor” is equally relevant.

In contrast to the young male protagonist of Valley of Shadows, Spoor‘s lead character is an old woman. Janina Duszejko (Agnieszka Mandat) has led an adventurous and nomadic life, a civil engineer who built bridges for disadvantaged communities in the Middle East when she was younger. In her twilight years she’s settled down in a cottage on the outskirts of a Polish village near the Czech border, living alone with her two beloved dogs and teaching English at the local primary school. She’s a fervent believer in astrology and thinks evolution is nonsense, but it’s her love for animals that makes her an eccentric in the eyes of the townsfolk, who glorify hunting. Even out-of-season hunting, which is technically illegal, is tacitly endorsed by the local police and all of her complaints about the matter go nowhere.

When her dogs fail to return home one evening, Janina is devastated, but her efforts to pursue the matter are – as ever – stymied by official indifference. Even the local Catholic priest (Marcin Bosak) is aggressively unsympathetic, telling her that it’s a sin to treat animals with the same consideration as people and that she should pray for her soul. (In a sermon delivered much later in the film, he even has the gall to describe St Hubert – patron saint of hunters – as “the first ecologist” while identifying hunters as “God’s ambassadors to nature”.)

Against this backdrop, Janina isn’t terribly upset to learn that one of her neighbours – a poacher known as Big Foot (Adam Rucinski) – has choked to death on a bone, being rather more interested in the way the local deer appear to be watching his house. When the local police chief (Andrzej Konopka), another hunter, is found dead in the vicinity with deer tracks leading away from his body, Janina tries to convince the authorities that the local wildlife are taking revenge on their oppressors – but although she is met with the ridicule you’d expect, the deaths don’t stop there.

As the story progresses, Janina forms her own little gang of misfits. There’s her elderly neighbour Matoga (Wiktor Zborowski), a social recluse who’s skilled with explosives; Dobra Nowina (Patrycja Volny), a sweet young woman trying desperately to get her younger brother away from their abusive parents, and who is being sexually exploited by violent local businessman Jaroslav Wnetzak (Borys Szyc); Dyzio (Jakub Gierszal), a similarly young IT specialist working for the local police who is hiding his epilepsy and devotes his spare time to translating William Blake into Polish; and Boros Schneider (Miroslav Krobot), a Czech entomologist with a thing for pheromones who hooks up with Janina after finding one of the bodies.

This is a film which revels in demonstrating that life doesn’t stop just because you’re old. Janina, Matoga and Boros are all in their mid-sixties but continue to live life to the full when given the opportunity. They put on animal costumes and dance at parties, they smoke joints around a campfire, there’s even a sex scene – which, while less pneumatic and lingering than your typical erotic escapade, is still frank and has the potential to make younger viewers squeamish (delighting the director no end I’m sure). As for the spate of murders, Spoor contrasts again with Valley of Shadows, providing a clear and definitive answer as to who or what is responsible and why.

I’ve been aware of Agnieszka Holland’s reputation as a talented filmmaker since the release of Europa, Europa but have somehow never quite gotten around to watching any of her work. She is credited as “scenario collaborator” on Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy and appears to split her working life between Poland and America. Although her feature film work has slowed down since the 1990s, she’s developed a healthy sideline in directing episodes of high profile US/Canadian TV shows such as The Wire (2004-8), Treme (2010-13), The Killing (2011-12) and House of Cards (2015-17) – she even directed the TV miniseries remake of Rosemary’s Baby (2014), which I’d never considered watching until now. Speaking about Spoor to The Guardian, she provided the following delightful statement: “One journalist for the Polish news agency wrote that we had made a deeply anti-Christian film that promoted eco-terrorism. We read that with some satisfaction and we are thinking of putting it on the promotional posters, because it will encourage people who might otherwise not have bothered to come and see it.” Holland brought her compatriot Kasia Adamik onboard to assist with the direction, although I wasn’t able to determine why or the extent of her contribution.

I have no intention of providing any definitive answer as to whether both, either or neither of these films includes a werewolf or any other related creature – but I’d certainly encourage you to watch them and find out for yourself.

MIFF69 – Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021)

The last-minute switch to running this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival entirely online had the unfortunate consequence that many of the films selected were not able to be shown at all, presumably due to a problem with the streaming rights. Thankfully, one of the selections that I’d most looked forward to – Kier-La Janisse’s Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021) – was made available to stream three days before the festival’s conclusion. Originally conceived as a supplementary feature for a limited edition Blu Ray of The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), the project just kept growing and growing, eventually earning its own separate release from Severin Films in the form of the glorious 195 minute documentary we have today.

There’s a lot of material here to get your teeth into, but I’ll do my best to stick to a broad overview. Janisse has broken up her subject matter into six chapters which flow together naturally, with key works coming up in multiple contexts and persistent themes becoming more evident as her narrative develops. Part 1, The Unholy Trinity, begins by defining terms and establishing the key filmic texts. Jonathan Rigby – author of English Gothic (2000, rev. 2015), American Gothic (2007, rev. 2017) and Euro Gothic (2016) – begins by tracking the origin of the term “folk horror” back to English Literature Professor Oscar James Campbell in 1936, before conversation turns to the titular “unholy trinity” of Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and The Wicker Man (1973). Referring to that last film, Samm Deighan (associate editor of Diabolique Magazine) makes the interesting observation that is shows the aristocracy reviving ancient traditions as a means of maintaining their hold on power.

In a move which feels thematically appropriate, the attention shifts back in time to examine the influences which laid the groundwork for the flowering of folk horror. The title of the second part – Who Is This Who Is Coming? Signposts of British Folk Horror – is a quote from “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad'” (1904) by M.R. James, whose work has informed adaptations such as Night of the Demon (1957) and Lawrence Gordon Clark’s A Ghost Story for Christmas series (1971-75). This section includes discussion of other significant literary antecedents, such as the works of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, before identifying a key figure from the world of television – Nigel Kneale – with particular attention to Quatermass and the Pit (1958-59 and 1967), The Stone Tape (1972), Beasts (1976) and Quatermass (1979). British television from this era provides a particularly rich vein to mine, with Adam Scovell – author of Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange (2017) – identifying a “Play for Today trilogy” of Robin Redbreast (1970), Penda’s Fen (1974) and Red Shift (1978). Resonating with Deighan’s earlier comment about reviving the past to prop up power structures, one contributor (whose name I forgot to note) suggests that films from the 1980s such as The Company of Wolves (1984) and The Lair of the White Worm (1988) represent a rejection of the Thatcher era’s “heritage film” fetishism.

Part 3 – We Don’t Go Back: Paganism and Witchcraft – draws its title from the lesser known Kneale work Murrain (1975), a quote from a heated discussion between a rationalist veterinarian and superstitious villagers. Looking at the way in which the mid-century revival of paganism and the occult has informed the genre, and referencing an intriguing connection between witchcraft and the women’s suffrage movement in the US, this relatively short section provides a smooth transition into Part 4 – Call Me from the Valley: American Folk Horror. This section is named after a 1954 short story by Manly Wade Wellman, part of his Silver John series which is heavily informed by Appalachian folklore and is represented in film by The Legend of Hillbilly John (1972). The other major authors cited here are Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving, with H.P. Lovecraft being referenced mainly for his tales involving backwoods inbreeding and ancient genetic legacies. Most of the films discussed here were new to me, but there was a fascinating and extensive discussion of the false assumptions and cultural generalisations behind the “Indian burial ground” trope so beloved of the horror genre. Jesse Wente, a First Nations Canadian arts journalist with a degree in Cinema Studies, makes the incisive point that colonial states have a deep fear of being colonised themselves.

This theme of displaced civilisations returning from the past to wreak revenge remains a strong theme throughout part 5 – All the Haunts Be Ours: Folk Horror Around the World – which opens up the genre to the world at large, occupying most of the final third of the documentary. Starting off in Australia with local critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas – author of 1000 Women in Horror (2020) – this section winds its way through Poland, Israel, Guatemala, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, the Soviet Union, Japan, Italy, France, Venezuela, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Laos, Estonia, Iceland, Spain, the former Yugoslavia, the Philippines and Thailand. Part 6 – Folk Horror Revival – draws proceedings to a close with a look at some of the more recent entries in the genre, while revisiting the term “folk horror” and what it means today. Mark Pilkington of Strange Attractor Press draws Derrida’s concept of hauntology into the mix with the observation that: “Hauntology and folk horror are both forms of cultural nostalgia for a mode of storytelling that doesn’t really exist any more and perhaps never existed at all. Perhaps both of these things are ideas that we, 30 or 40 years later, are projecting onto the past.”

In addition to directing and/or producing documentary features, Kier-La Janisse is the founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies and the small-press publisher Spectacular Optical Publications. Her deeply personal book House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (2012) explores the ways in which her personal experiences of trauma have informed her taste in films and how those films have in turn helped her process that trauma. She has also co-edited themed anthologies of film writing such as Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015) and Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television (2017).

Janisse has assembled quite the team of personnel to assist in the creation of this documentary. The name which really stands out is Canadian cinema maverick Guy Maddin – director of Dracula, Pages From a Virgin’s Diary (2002) and My Winnipeg (2007) (reviewed here) – who created the magical animated paper collage sequences bridging various sections of the film. The other animated sequences are the work of Ashley Thorpe, who made several short horror animations before creating the feature length Borley Rectory (2017), which examines the history of “the most haunted house in England.” Linda Hayden and Ian Ogilvy, the stars of The Blood on Satan’s Claw and Witchfinder General respectively, contribute readings of various examples of traditional folk poetry. Jim Williams, who provided the original music, has spent most of his career writing soundtracks for movies either in or adjacent to the genre, including a run of four Ben Wheatley films – beginning with the more straightforward crime film Down Terrace (2009) before entering stranger territory in Kill List (2011), Sightseers (2012) and the magnificent A Field in England (2013). And the broad selection of contributors covers a wide range of perspectives, more than justifying the documentary’s length – although I can see ways in which it could be cut down (and at least one contributor has been removed since the original trailer was cut), a shorter edit would lose much of its richness.

In summary, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched is essential viewing for anybody interested in the subject matter – and for those put off by its length, the inevitable Blu Ray release will make it easier to consume in small doses. As I can no longer find a trailer for the film, I’ve included an interview between Kat Ellinger (editor of Diabolique) and Kier-La Janisse. (Update: Plus a trailer for the upcoming boxset release!)

MIFF69 – Rock Bottom Riser (2021)

Two years ago the Melbourne International Film Festival showed Viktor Kossakovsky’s Aquarela (2018), a document of the power and majesty of water in its various forms, accompanied by a magnificent score from Apocalyptica‘s Eicca Toppinen. Based solely on the trailer and promotional materials, Fern Silva’s Rock Bottom Riser (2021) looks as if it fills the same purpose for the element of fire – but while this is certainly an aspect of the film, it has a broader purpose in illuminating the culture and environment of Hawaii.

Most documentaries are constructed around a coherent narrative and/or argumentative thread with the intention of leading their audience to a particular conclusion or destination. Rock Bottom Riser takes a different approach, carefully juxtaposing seemingly unrelated materials in a way which encourages an audience to make their own connections. This can be difficult to pull off effectively – if you were to take the movie apart into its individual components it would be easy to conclude that it’s nothing more than a haphazard jumble of unrelated style and content. Silva attempts to prepare his audience for this incongruity by opening on a still forest scene accompanied by an unrelated speech including the occasional word – “branch”, for example – which takes on a different meaning in an arboreal context.

Having subliminally established his approach, Silva hits the audience with one of the film’s best sequences, disrupting the silence with a burst of electronic music as aerial photography conducts the viewer in and out, back and forth along the length of an extensive lava flow, bass tones bubbling and crackling in parallel to the molten rock, before pulling back to see the full perspective of its fiery course through a forested area and around some form of habitation. There are a few more pure audiovisual experiences to encounter along the way, most of them in a natural setting – the one exception takes place in a vaping shop named Volcano, which sees three guys putting on a virtuoso smoke ring display while dancing to bombastic hip hop (and probably doing terrible things to their lungs). One other music-related sequence stands out due to its different treatment – a giddily enthusiastic teacher talking to her mature age poetry students about Simon & Garfunkel’s “I Am a Rock” (1965), urging them to listen closely to the words before playing it in its entirety as the camera pans across their silent reactions.

Silva devotes a lot of time to Hawaii’s radio telescopes and observatories, including time lapse footage of the night sky and a visit to the SETI facilities. These are interspersed with references to Hawaii’s ancient navigational techniques and lost oral history, drawing parallels between sea voyages to Tahiti and interstellar exploration, traditional cartography and mapping the sky. Allowing the history of the archipelago to become thoroughly intertwined with its technological present, Silva drops a bomb roughly two thirds of the way in by introducing a contrasting perspective – the colonisation of local sacred sites by the scientific instruments of an invading culture which enlists local law enforcement to enforce the separation of the people from their land.

The dynamic tension between these perspectives is explored elsewhere through references to the movie Moana (2016). Early on, we hear an unidentified local talking about the importance of increasing awareness of their vanishing history through filmic representation – he is delighted at the prospect of it being showcased in a Hollywood film starring Dwayne Johnson and accepts that an American production will inevitably default to an American cast. Towards the end of the film, we’re shown footage of an interview with Johnson on a local TV station as he talks about meeting with local community members in an attempt to make sure their culture is properly represented. It’s a gesture towards reconciliation which suggests a way forward, while acknowledging the complexity of navigating different perspectives.

Although most of Silva’s footage is presented in a more-or-less straightforward manner, he also makes creative use of post-production techniques to create a purely visual suggestion of lost history and cultural erasure. During an early section focused on traditional textiles, a tribal leader gazing across the landscape is depicted as an empty set of clothing hanging in the air, their shape suggesting a face and body where none can be seen. In the closing minutes of the film, a series of verdant forest scenes reveal subtle areas of distortion, a chameleonic shimmer of light bending around a figure who is front and centre but would otherwise go unnoticed, recognisable as a person only by the distorting effect they have on their surroundings.

Rock Bottom Riser is Fern Silva’s first feature length documentary, but he has an extensive body of work in short film going back 14 years. Silva filmed, assembled and edited all of the material himself, but collaborated on the sound design with psychoacoustic composer Serge Tcherepnin (who also wrote much of the score) and sound artist Lea Bertucci (credited for additional sound & music), whose contributions are a vital component of making the pure audiovisual sections so successful. Extracts from SETI-X’s Scrambles of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, Remixed by Extraterrestrials (2010) are used to round out some of the astronomy sequences.

Rock Bottom Riser isn’t going to be for everybody, and it may disappoint those led by the trailer to expect something more like Ron Fricke’s Baraka (1992), but it’s an interesting experience – and at only 70 minutes long, it shouldn’t be too difficult for a viewer to sit through any bits they might find less interesting.

MIFF69 – Centre Stage (1991) [and Painted Faces]

Stanley Kwan’s Centre Stage [Ruan Lingyu] (1991) takes us back to the early days of Chinese cinema with a hybrid biopic/documentary depicting the rise to stardom and untimely death of silent movie star Ruan Lingyu (1910-1935), as exquisitely portrayed by Maggie Cheung. We’ll also be stepping outside of this year’s MIFF programming to explore a different aspect of the film industry with Painted Faces [Qi xiao fu] (1988), following the early years of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung as they trained in the Peking Opera tradition.

[A quick note on the anglicised spelling of Chinese names. I’ve chosen to reproduce the names of people and movies as presented in the subtitles of the restored print made available to the Melbourne International Film Festival. This often differs drastically from what you’ll find on Wikipedia or most other internet sources. Those sources are likely to be more accurate regarding modern anglicisation/translation conventions, but I thought it best to remain faithful to the film as I experienced it.]

Ruan Lingyu was China’s first great screen star, making her first film at the age of 16. Centre Stage joins her story in 1929 as the creative talent behind the newly forming Linhua Studio discuss their plans. Director Sun Yu (played here by his son Sun Dongguang) wants to showcase her potential to perform any role by casting her first as a prostitute in Reminiscences of Peking [Gu du chun meng] (1930) (aka Spring Dream of an Old Capital) before following up with a role as a chaste singer in Wayside Flowers [Ye cao xian hua] (1930) (aka Wild Flowers by the Road). We first meet Ruan herself in what appears to be a dramatic scene from her own life, until she breaks character with a smile to inform the director that her performance wasn’t good enough before repeating the scene. The line between her life and that of her characters continues to be blurred in the following scene – a conversation with the woman with whom she shared the previous scene seems at first to be part of the same narrative but turns out to be an intimate exchange between friends, as Ruan asks her what it feels like to give birth. In love with a man she knows will never fully commit to her, she adopted a daughter rather than rely on him but needs her friend to reassure her that you can still love a child fully without having been through the birthing experience. Although the distinction between Ruan’s life and her performances is clearer from this point, parallels between the two will remain an important aspect of the film.

Leaving aside the directors with whom she worked, the trajectory of Ruan’s life is depicted largely via her relationships with three men. First up is Chang Ta-min (Lawrence Ng), an inveterate gambler who hooked up with her when she was sixteen. Their relationship is very unbalanced – he’ll be absent for days before turning up again on her doorstep and constantly leeches off her career for extra cash and expensive gifts. He’s constantly and blatantly unfaithful, but she accepts this as just a given of being with him. The second man is Tang Chi-san (Chin Han), a wealthy married businessman first encountered alongside his mistress Chang Chih-yun, an actress who is ten years older than Ruan – and who is rumoured to be kept under his thumb by an addiction to opium. This unsubstantiated rumour is never given any credence by the film, but its introduction here foreshadows the important role that gossip will play later on. Tang takes a shine to Ruan and eventually wins her over after ending things with Chih-yun. He sets Ruan up in her own house with her mother (Hsiao Hsiang) and adopted daughter (Yumiko Cheng), taking care of the financial arrangements for the separation from her ex. Finally we have Tsai Chu-seng (Tony Leung), director of New Women [Xin nu xing] (1935) – her second-last, and most significant, film. Although it’s unclear whether or not they had a sexual relationship, they clearly have a significant emotional connection and their scenes together stand out as a highlight of the film.

New Women was based on the tragic life of Al Hsia (1912-1934), an actress and screenwriter who was hounded by the tabloids and took her own life. A little over a year after her death, Ruan Lingyu – who played her fictional counterpart Wei Ming – would leave her life in much the same way. The last half of Centre Stage is devoted to this final year of Ruan’s life. Despite being a highlight of her career, New Women was savaged by the press, who didn’t take kindly at being held to account for Al’s suicide and attempted to force cuts on the film (possibly, it’s suggested, at the instigation of the Kuomintang, who didn’t feel that Ruan was morally sound enough to represent the modern Chinese woman). Thanks to her hypocritical scum of an ex, always on the lookout for money and embittered by his bruised male ego, her relationship with Tang blows up into a tabloid scandal, beginning the spiral into depression – carefully hidden from everyone around her – which results in her suicide.

I mentioned up top that this is not a standard biopic. While much of the film’s 2½ hour running time is taken up with its dramatisation of Ruan’s life, the film opens with a discussion between director Stanley Kwan and star Maggie Cheung about their subject. Hearing a summary of how Ruan’s career developed, starting off in comedies and genre pictures before transitioning to serious dramatic roles, Maggie chuckles as she observes how much this resembles her own career, immediately establishing the theme of life imitating art. Kwan continues to intersperse his dramatic retelling with B&W interludes in which the actors discuss the real people they’re portraying and others provide additional historical context. It’s during these interludes that we learn that Chang Ta-min’s vile behaviour didn’t end with Ruan’s death – amongst the spate of dramatic works depicting the Chang-Ruan-Tang relationship triangle, Chang immediately tried to capitalise on her death by selling himself as the wronged man in a film project which was swiftly cancelled due to public backlash. Despite this he persisted, eventually playing himself in Who’s to Blame? [Shui zui guo] (1937) and a thinly veiled version of himself in Wife of a Friend [Peng you zhi qi] (1938). Neither film survives today, and Chang died in 1938.

Kwan was also fortunate enough to speak with people who knew Ruan Lingyu before her death. Included here is interview footage with director Sun Yu (filmed less than a month before his own death) and fellow actress Chan Yen-yen aka Lily Li (often characterised as Mae West to Ruan’s Marlene Dietrich) – she is played in the film by Carina Lau, who was the most significant female supporting role. Even more precious is Kwan’s use of vintage footage from Ruan’s body of work. Of the thirty films she made, most no longer exist – only seven survive in their entirety. Kwan and Chueng have done their best to fill in some of these gaps by recreating key scenes from Three Modern Women [San ge mo deng nu xing] (1932), Night in the City [Chengshi zhi ye] (1933) and The Sea of Fragrant Snow [Xiang xuehai] (1934). But while these glimpses of how it might have been are valuable, the sequences which really stand out are those in which they re-enact scenes from three films which still exist – Little Toys [Xiao wanyi] (1933), The Goddess [Shen nu] (1934) and New Women. In each instance Kwan begins by taking us behind the scenes, showing Ruan working out the details with her co-stars and listening to what her directors want her to convey. Next we see Maggie Cheung play the scenes in character, before finally juxtaposing her performance with the original scenes played by Ruan herself. It’s a masterpiece of reverse engineering how the original films were constructed while showcasing the talents of both actresses, foregrounding Maggie Cheung while granting space for Ruan Lingyu to have a voice in this depiction of her life.

Besides appearing in the documentary interludes, Kwan injects himself into the narrative by playing Fei Mu, who directed two of Ruan’s films. I’d like to quote a dialogue exchange taken from a party scene set on the last day of Ruan’s life, which she uses to say a fond farewell to her colleagues prior to her midnight suicide. Ruan is talking about the speech she’s due to give at a friend’s school in honour of Women’s Day.

Ruan: “What’s the idea of this festival? To celebrate us girls for rising up from a centuries-old men-dominated history.”

Tang (drunk): “You women are standing up and we men are falling down.”

Fei: “When women stand up it doesn’t necessarily mean men are falling down. We can stand up together in this large world.”

It’s an exchange which has little direct connection with the film surrounding it, feeling more like an authorial interjection aimed at the audience – but it’s a beautiful sentiment and, given that the film has already blurred the lines between fiction and documentary, it’s not out of place. Once we reach Ruan’s funeral in the final minutes of the film, Kwan throws out all pretense at maintaining a division between the two, cutting the emotional tension by showing his own crew filming the final scenes and the actors joking with each other. It’s a potentially risky move, but for me it worked.

I’m not very familiar with Stanley Kwan’s other work, but he received great acclaim for Rouge [Yim ji kau] (1987), a film with its roots in the same 1930s Shanghai setting. Here he’s opted for a more muted colour palette, with browns, oranges and yellows dominating – something I would have attributed to the age of the print, if not for the knowledge that this was a new 4K restoration made with the director’s supervision, making it clear that this was a deliberate choice. The movie benefits from being scripted by film critic Peggy Chiao, providing the crucial female perspective which, supported by her extensive knowledge of film history, forms the film’s spine. But for me, this is all about Maggie Cheung, who as one of the greatest actors of her generation is a perfect choice to portray China’s first female star of the silver screen. Her compelling performance demands attention whenever she’s on screen, no matter how much else is going on around her, earning her four awards as Best Actress – including the Berlin International Film Festival’s prestigious Silver Bear. Without meaning to imply anything negative about the rest of the cast, the only other performer working on the same level as her is Tony Leung. This isn’t the first time they’ve worked together, nor would it be the last. Sharing the small screen early in their careers on the TV series Police Cadet [San jaat si hing] (1984) and The Yangs’ Saga [Yang ka cheung] (1985), they went on to a string of four films with renowned director Wong Kar-wai – Days of Being Wild [Ah Fei jing juen] (1990), Ashes of Time [Dung che sai duk] (1994), In the Mood for Love [Fa yeung nin wah] (2000) and 2046 (2004). Rounding out their list of shared credits are The Banquet [Ho moon yeh yin] (1991), The Eagle Shooting Heroes [Se diu ying hung: Dung sing sai jau] (1993) – a parody made during the filming of Ashes of Time with the same cast – and Zhang Yimou’s Hero [Ying xiong] (2002).

About a week prior to my encounter with Centre Stage, I was coming to the end of a month-long binge on Shaw Brothers films which were about to leave Netflix. Among these films – which varied wildly in quality – one of the standouts was Alex Law’s Painted Faces, which provides a valuable historical perspective on the connective tissue linking the Peking Opera tradition (which stretches back to 1790) to the rise of the Hong Kong martial arts movie which started to gather momentum in the 1960s. Serving as the intersection point between the two is Yu Jim-yuen’s China Drama Academy, birthplace of the Seven Little Fortunes troupe whose most famous graduates include Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Yuen Qiu, Yuen Wah and Corey Yuen.

We’re introduced to the Academy through the eyes of Cheng Lung (Siu Ming-fui), referred to here mostly by his nickname Big Nose but later to achieve fame as Jackie Chan. Poorly suited to regular schools and having recently made a nuisance of himself at the American embassy in Australia, where his father worked as the head chef, his mother (Mary Li) drops him off here as a last resort. Excited by the prospect of doing nothing but pretending to fight, he eagerly volunteers for the maximum enrolment term of ten years, but soon finds that he’s signed up for a much stricter form of physical discipline than he’d anticipated. The first half of the film follows the life of the various male students as they train under the guidance of their “big brother” Sammo Hung (Yeung Yam-yin) and Master Yu (portrayed with great sympathy by the real Sammo Hung). Key elements of this section of the film are their gruelling training regimen; the mockery they receive from students attending the more academically inclined local school; the budding friendship between Cheng, Sammo and Yuen Biao (Koo Fai); the role Sammo plays in looking out for the others and taking them on the occasional illicit expedition outside their school; and the stage performances of the star pupils which are the school’s sole source of income.

The second half skips forward in time to the younger characters’ teen years, which are enlivened by their introduction to the world of the all-girls equivalent run by Ching (Cheng Pei-pei). This also allows for a rather sweet strand of potential romance between Yu and Ching, who have clearly nursed a long-term mutual attraction which turns them both into tongue-tied nervous nellies – with all the heavy lifting of the nudging them both along being left to Ching and her oldest student (unfortunately the credits are too sparsely documented for me to tell you her name). This period also sees the Peking Opera tradition in decline, as the hardcore fans age out and the younger audience flocks to the cinema instead. Dwindling box office puts the school at threat, and the decision of the government to demolish the building housing the school finishes the Academy off entirely, with its students dispersing to find work in the film industry as stuntmen – which will eventually see many of the schools alumni make their way up to become action choreographers, film directors and – for the lucky few – movie stars in their own right. The movie ends with Master Yu heading off to America to establish a new school before his retirement, paying a final fond farewell to his star students from the Seven Little Fortunes – although sadly whoever wrote the subtitles undercuts the final scene, failing to understand that the Chinese characters on the fan Yu has been gifted are intended to refer to the troupe’s name (I forgot to note down the alternate translation provided but it was something like “Seven Destinies”).

Alex Law has peppered his cast with significant actors from the history of the genre. Sammo Hung, of course, was a member of Yu’s troupe and it must have been a strange experience for him to play his own teacher – particularly in the scene which has him beating his own younger self. Cheng Pei-pei is best known for her breakthrough performance as the lead of King Hu’s Come Drink With Me [Da zui xia] (1966) and her late career appearance as Jade Fox in Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon [Wo hu cang long] (2000). Lam Ching-ying also has a major supporting role as Wah, Yu’s close friend who is approaching the end of his working life as a stunt performer. Sammo and Lam share one of the film’s best scenes, an extended sequence near the end in which Lam suffers a head injury during a stunt gone wrong and needs to be carefully talked down before he does himself further damage. Sadly, Lam himself was also nearing the end of his career at this point. After fifteen years as an actor he finally achieved fame as the Taoist priest in Mr. Vampire [Geung see sin sang] (1985), a role which was so popular that he became typecast and found it difficult to secure more varied roles. He died of cancer far too young in 1997, having lived for only 44 years. Also worthy of note is Wu Ma, an actor and director who had a small role in Mr. Vampire and cameos here as a film director, but is best known to me as the Taoist priest from A Chinese Ghost Story [Sien lui yau wan] (1987), one of my personal favourites.

Painted Faces is probably more accessible to a general audience than Centre Stage, for a few reasons. There’s the fact that more people have heard of Jackie Chan than Ruan Lingyu; there’s the wider range of potential audience identification points offered by spanning three generations; there’s the more conventional narrative structure of Painted Faces; and, of course, there’s the matter of length – Painted Faces is a lot shorter! Both, however, are well worth seeing – and for those who have the patience, Centre Stage offers a richer experience.

MIFF69 – The Nowhere Inn (2020)

Musician Annie Clark – better known under her stage name St. Vincent – and comedian/musician Carrie Brownstein – who made her name as the co-creator/co-writer/co-star of sketch comedy series Portlandia (2011-18) – have been friends for 10 years. The Nowhere Inn (2020) brought them together to document St. Vincent’s I Am a Lot Like You! Tour (2018-19) – although what they came up with is far from a conventional tour record, merging the genres of documentary, mockumentary and psychological thriller to create a metafictional reflection on the nature of identity and the way the act of observation has an inherent tendency to distort what is observed.

This deviation from conventional documentary is apparent from the very first scene. St. Vincent is in the back of a stretch limousine transporting her through the desert, attempting to take some personal time while being constantly interrupted by a driver (Ezra Buzzington) who feels it’s very important to tell her that he’s never heard of her. No sooner has she put her headphones back on and returned to her book than he interrupts again to tell her that his son is on the phone and he’s never heard of her either. Reluctantly responding to their mutual demand for her to sing one of her songs, we’re pulled abruptly out of the song by their reaction to the word “motherfucker” – the driver abruptly ends the call and stops bothering her, allowing her to return to reading Maggie Nelson’s The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (2012), a book examining the question of whether a focus on representations of cruelty has the potential to induce cruelty in others. Although the sight of the book’s cover might seem at first to be nothing more than a joking reference to the driver’s microaggressions, the book’s broader theme of artifice influencing reality becomes more relevant as the film unfolds.

“Why was the movie never completed?” St. Vincent’s rhetorical question spoken directly to camera provides the framework bracketing the rest of the film. It’s followed by Carrie’s first filmed footage as a more awkward Annie stares uncertainly into the camera and tries to work out what is expected of her. Annie is hoping for a film which shows her as she really is – and who better to make such a film than a close friend who knows her well? Echoes of their prior friendship are scattered through the film in the form of grainy home video footage, providing an anchor to simpler, more open and more natural times which will become increasingly distant. Carrie’s initial optimism for the project quickly fades when she realises that Annie’s natural behaviour behind the scenes involves chilling out with video games, going through her regular morning exercise routine, or getting excited about hitting the double word score in a post-gig game of Scrabble – not exactly the “traditional” rock lifestyle.

The first third of the film sees Carrie trying to force some sort of drama – something more like what she’s used to seeing in music documentaries. She brings up the fact that Annie’s father is in prison in an attempt to capture some raw emotion, but quickly dismisses this as insensitive. Later she tries to force a story onto the film by suggesting they work on a new song together, providing some sort of thread for the audience to follow which could also act as a commercial hook, insistent that the subject of the song should be Annie’s choice but shooting down all of her ideas. Woven in amongst this is a constant pressure for Annie to bring more of her St. Vincent persona to her backstage behaviour, with Carrie wilfully oblivious to the irony of attempting to make an audience connect with the real Annie by suppressing her natural personality.

The turning point hits when a doorman refuses to allow Annie access to her next performance venue because she doesn’t have a pass and he doesn’t recognise her – despite her face on the posters being visible all around him. Sneaking in through a back entrance, she overhears a reporter badmouthing her as arrogant and inaccessible – when in fact the reporter had barely paid attention to her and Annie had gone out of her way to be nice. The next time we see her backstage she’s begun starting to behave as she thinks people want to her to behave, and – sure enough – when she next sees the reporter and treats her with disdain, the reaction is awe at her “authentic” star behaviour. It’s not long before Annie slips a note under Carrie’s door inviting her into her hotel room, where Carrie is greeted by the sight of St. Vincent and her new girlfriend – actress Dakota Johnson – posing on a bed in their lingerie. St. Vincent demands that Carrie film them having sex, which Carrie tries to do as best she can without looking while begging (unsuccessfully) to be allowed to leave and find an intimacy coordinator.

As Annie disappears further into a consciously-constructed St. Vincent persona, Carrie becomes ever more desperate in her attempts to bring back the person she once knew. St. Vincent’s behaviour becomes ever more artificial and stylised, while the imagery becomes increasingly prone to rippling and disintegrating into burning celluloid. Carrie and St. Vincent’s scenes separate from each other continue to diverge stylistically, creating a widening contrast between naturalism and artifice, but the gravity of their shared creative project brings them inexorably back together until their trajectories finally collide.

Although it’s tempting to go into more detail about various little incidents, I don’t want to spoil the experience of coming to this movie fresh more than I already have (other than to note that you should keep watching all the way through the credits). Appearing as themselves – or at least versions of themselves – are St. Vincent and her band, Carrie Brownstein and Dakota Johnson. Everybody else in the film, including the main characters’ relatives, is an actor playing a role – and it’s probably worth mentioning that, as far as I could determine, Dakota Johnson has never been in a relationship with Annie Clark (although they do have chemistry). Carrie Brownstein is in fact a director, having worked on both short films and TV since 2016, but she’s not this film’s director – that real-life role is taken by Bill Benz, who has a long-term connection with Brownstein from Portlandia, starting the series as an editor and finishing as a director. Brownstein & Clark collaborated on the script, which contains a surprising amount of reality, such as the fact that Clark’s father really was in prison at the time (his subsequent release from incarceration providing inspiration for her next album). Both women fully commit to the illusion of reality that they are trying to build and clearly have a lot of confidence in their relationship to be willing to so brutally undermine themselves. And although I’ve barely mentioned it, there’s also plenty of skilfully filmed concert footage on display, so anybody coming to the film purely to see a St. Vincent performance can consider that box ticked.

Will you leave this film having learned more about the real St. Vincent? That’s difficult to say – but then, that’s part of the point of the film, which implicitly poses the counter-question: “Would you have learned any more about the real St. Vincent if this were a more conventional documentary?” Whatever your own answer might be, I think that Annie Clark chose the more interesting of the two options.

MIFF69 – Sisters With Transistors (2020)

Out of all the offerings at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival, this is the one I’ve been anticipating for the longest time, ever since it was first announced as a work in progress roughly three years ago. My first viewing of Doctor Who (1963-89) as a very young child was a formative experience in many ways, but the most relevant one here is my personal musical sweet spot of 20^th century analogue electronic music. Sisters with Transistors: Electronic Music’s Unsung Heroines (2020) charts the development of this musical form via the words and works of its most significant female contributors, some of whom may be passingly familiar to a general audience, but most of whom have only begun to be more widely celebrated since the dawning of the 21^st century.

The documentary is narrated by the familiar tones of legendary avant-garde performer and composer Laurie Anderson, whose first single “O Superman” (1981) was championed by famous British DJ John Peel, reaching #2 in the UK charts. Although Anderson sets the scene, providing context for the journey the audience is about to begin, she’s not a major presence in the film. Director Laura Rovner has chosen instead to allow the women under consideration to speak for themselves where possible via a mixture of examples from their body of work, archival footage, recordings of old interviews and – for three of the four women still alive – newly filmed footage. Most of the contextual information about their work is provided by their colleagues or by modern female musicians discussing their personal influences, with Anderson’s narration making brief reappearances only when necessary to provide connective tissue.

The first woman to be featured is Clara Rockmore (1911-98), a concert violinist who became fascinated by Léon Theremin’s newly invented instrument the theremin, helping to refine its development and achieving fame as its preeminent performer. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop is next, represented by both Delia Derbyshire (1937-2001) – most famous for her realisation of the Doctor Who theme music and seen here demonstrating composition from painstakingly pieced together fragments of tape – and the less well known, but crucial, figure of Daphne Oram (1925-2003), co-founder of the Workshop. Although she is modest about the extent of her contribution, quoted only as saying that she “helped” to start it, their mutual colleague Brian Hodgson is more emphatic in his statement that it would never have come into being without her. Oram was also a pioneer in the graphic representation of sound, developing her own technique known as Oramics, allowing the composer to draw shapes directly onto film stock which would be fed into a machine and translated into sound. On the other side of the English Channel, Eliane Radigue (b. 1932) developed her talents in the musique concrète tradition, training with key figures Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. Both Radigue and Derbyshire talk about the influence of World War II in forming the way they thought about music – Derbyshire’s love for abstract sound had its birth in the sound of the air raid sirens over London, while Radigue enjoyed listening to the sounds of planes travelling overhead, picking apart their different sounds and rearranging them inside her head to form her first compositions.

Over in America, Bebe Barron (1925-2008) and her husband Louis collaborated on soundtracks for avant-garde films, with Louis creating the raw sonic materials and Bebe turning them into coherent musical pieces – Louis talks about her astonishing ability to mentally retain the contents of hours of abstract recordings, using only her memory to identify the exact points on multiple tape reels containing the elements she wished to use. The two are best known in the mainstream for creating the astonishing soundtrack to Forbidden Planet (1956), although the musicians union kicked up a fuss and refused to allow them to be credited as composers – they were credited instead for “electronic tonalities” and it took another 20 years before their soundtrack achieved the respect it deserved. Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center under the leadership of the higher profile Morton Subotnick and was primarily focused on live performance. Maryanne Amacher (1938-2009), the one featured musician here whose name was unfamiliar to me, started off working with field recordings before developing compositions around the creation of psychoacoustic illusions and the exploration of scientific ideas. Transgender composer Wendy Carlos (b. 1939) became famous for her electronic arrangements of classical music, contributing to the scores of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Shining (1980). Suzanne Ciani (b. 1946) found her musical outlet in the world of advertising, where she found that her clients’ desire to be seen as “cutting edge” allowed her complete creative freedom to experiment with her equipment. The final musician to be featured is Laurie Spiegel (b. 1945), one of the first people to use computers as a compositional tool, drawing at first on her background in Appalachian folk music before creating the Music Mouse program for the Macintosh, which she has continued to update all the way through OS9. Rovner makes clever use of her editing team to link the visual aspect of this program back to Daphne Oram’s Oramics, reinforcing the connections between her various subjects before devoting the final 10 minutes to revisiting Spiegel, Ciani and Rodigue in 2018.

Although little is made of gender at first, it becomes more prominent the further forward we journey in time. Léon Theremin’s infatuation with Rockmore is mentioned in passing and can be clearly seen in contemporary footage, but from her perspective their relationship doesn’t appear to stretch beyond friendship and collegiality. Derbyshire talks about how lucky she was to be a woman from a working class background allowed to study Mathematics at university (although Hodgson is more forthright in his comments about her mathematical abilities). Radigue introduces the difficulty of being taken seriously in macho French society, with one of her co-workers under Schaeffer saying that it was good to have her there simply because she “smells good” (although for what it’s worth she does appear to have had Schaeffer’s respect). Oliveros is the first explicitly feminist performer, writing a piece for the New York Times on institutional misogyny and providing the wonderful quote: “How do you exorcise the canon of classical music of misogyny? With one oscillator, a turntable and tape delay.” The inclusion of Carlos may be controversial for TERFs, but it’s good to see her featured here – even if, for some odd reason, she’s the one featured artist not to be mentioned on the film’s promotional website. Ciani talks about how she couldn’t get a record deal because the labels weren’t interested in female performers who couldn’t sing, and points out that although she eventually became the first woman to provide a score for a Hollywood feature film – Lily Tomlin’s The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981) – it took another 14 years before the next solo female composer was hired. Spiegel ties the topic in a bow by addressing the reason it’s important for films like this to exist – when she was growing up, she had no idea it was possible for a woman to be a composer and her teachers actively discouraged her from becoming a musician. It wasn’t until she’d completed a degree in Social Sciences that she decided to return to her initial love and forged the career she hadn’t had the tools to imagine. Spiegel, Ciani and Radigue make it clear that women are still under-represented in the world of music composition today and clearly value the opportunity to act as role models for those yet to come.

Speaking of the visibility of women and their work, the IMDB entry for director Lisa Rovner is embarrassingly incomplete, listing only one other short film and one job as an assistant camera operator. I didn’t have to go past the first page of a Google search to find at least two other short films she’s directed, and her website makes it clear that she’s more prolific than that, although this film is indeed her sole feature-length work as director. Rovner has assembled a fine selection of interviewees, both male and female, variously credited as composers, musicologists, sound artists and musicians. I won’t provide an exhaustive list here, but among those not already mentioned above are Mandy Wigby, one of the four female synth players making up the band Sisters of Transistors (assembled by 808 State’s Graham Massey); Kim Gordon, bassist, guitarist, songwriter and vocalist for Sonic Youth; Holly Herndon, a significant electronic musician and sound artist who came to prominence in the last decade; Ramona Gonzalez, a singer-songwriter who performs as Nite Jewel; and Andy Votel of Finders Keepers Records, whose compilation Lixiviation (2011) showcasing Suzanne Ciani’s early work had a pivotal role in reviving her reputation as a key figure in the history of electronic music. It’s also important to note the contributions of Rovner’s editing team (Michael Aaglund, Mariko Pontpetit & Kara Blake) and sound designer (Martha Salogni) – more information on their careers can be found here.

Sisters with Transistors is essential viewing for anybody with an interest in the history of 20^th century electronic music, but is also accessible to those with a more general interest in unsung female contributions to the arts.

Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen

Originally portrayed by Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury [Jing wu men] (1972), Chen Zhen is a fictionalised mashup of two disciples of Chinese martial artist Huo Yuanjia (1868-1910), the co-founder of Shanghai’s Chin Woo Athletic Association, who achieved folk hero status for his public bouts taking down foreign fighters. Screenwriter Ni Kuang saw the name Chen Zhen in Huo’s obituary and, liking the sound of it, pinched it for his story – creating a character with a number of parallels (possibly unintentional) to another of his followers, Liu Zhensheng. The character has undergone a number of revivals over the years, most recently being reinvented as a pulp action hero played by Donnie Yen in Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen [Jing wu feng yun: Chen Zhen] (2010).

But before getting to that, it’s worth going on a quick trawl through the cinematic history of Chen Zhen. Having spent several years in Hollywood but never quite cutting through to the level of success he deserved, Bruce Lee came up with the concept of the martial arts/western TV series Kung Fu (1972-75) as a personal vehicle, only to see to the lead role handed to a Caucasian actor who had no martial arts training (David Carradine), with the studio refusing to credit Lee due to their claim that they had already come up with the same idea independently – a claim which doesn’t hold much water since they had apparently told Lee they wanted it to be set in the modern day rather than the Old West. Returning to Hong Kong, Lee was astonished to discover that he had become famous for his role as the Asian sidekick Kato in The Green Hornet (1966-67), a Batman (1966-68) spinoff generally referred to there as “The Kato Show”. His newfound local fame led to four films with Golden Harvest, the last of which was interrupted in order to make his international breakthrough film Enter the Dragon (1973) – although sadly he never had the opportunity to capitalise on his success, dying one month before its release.

Lo Wei’s Fist of Fury was the second of Lee’s films for Golden Harvest, set in 1930s Shanghai at a time when the Chinese people were being oppressed by the Japanese. Returning to Shanghai to marry his fiancée, Chen Zhen learns that his old master Huo Yuanjia has died and the remaining students are being harassed by the members of a rival Japanese dojo. After experiencing heapings of racist abuse in a variety of situations, Chen discovers that his master was actually poisoned and takes on the rival dojo single-handed, defeating all of the students and killing their master. Chen surrenders to a Chinese policeman only to be confronted by armed Japanese soldiers, with the film ending on a freeze-frame accompanied by gunshots as he launches himself at the soldiers.

Fist of Fury was a huge success, but the death of Bruce Lee (and the character of Chen Zhen) didn’t exactly leave much room for a sequel. During the mid-1970s race to find “the new Bruce Lee”, Lo Wei attempted to establish Jackie Chan as his successor in New Fist of Fury [Xin jing wu men] (1976), in which Chan played a street kid befriended by Chen Zhen’s fiancée. In the wake of this film’s relatively poor reception, Bruce Lee look-alike Bruce Li (real name Ho Chung-tao) starred as Chen Shan, Chen Zhen’s brother, in Fist of Fury II [Jing wu men xu ji] (1977) and Fist of Fury III [Jie quan ying zhua gong] (1979).

Chen Zhen himself finally returned to the big screen in the form of Jet Li in Gordon Chan’s Fist of Legend [Jing wu ying xiong] (1994), a remake of the original set once again in 1937 Shanghai. It’s a worthy successor to the original, taking some liberties with the story but overall faithful in spirit, if more nuanced in its consideration of race relations. The Japanese antagonist of the original has been reinvented as General Fujita, a violent madman who is detested by the pacifist Japanese ambassador. In this version of events Chen tries to avoid killing Fujita rather than deliberately setting out to murder him, and the Japanese ambassador colludes in faking Chen’s death to satisfy the Japanese authorities and prevent the outbreak of war. This changed ending presumably owes a debt to TV series The Fist [陳真] (1982), starring Bruce Leung, which saw the Mayor of Shanghai faking Chen’s death – although where the TV series had him temporarily retire to Beijing, Jet Li’s character heads to Manchuria to continue the fight against Japanese oppression.

Those paying attention to the dates mentioned earlier may have noticed one glaring error with the chronology of the films – Chen Zhen’s teacher Huo Yuanjia died not in the 1930s, but in 1910. This is not, as far as I’ve been able to determine, an error made by the various TV versions of his story. Although Fist of Legend was more successful internationally than it was in the domestic market, its revival of the character may have been a factor in the commissioning of TV series Fist of Fury [Jing wu men] (1995), which saw Donnie Yen play Chen Zhen for the first time. Given 30 episodes to work with, the show starts with Chen’s arrival in Shanghai prior to his first meeting with Huo Yanjia (here named Fok Yuen-gap in line with the earlier TV series The Legendary Fok [Daai hap Fok Jyun Gaap] (1981)) and ends the same way as Bruce Lee’s original.

Which finally brings us, fifteen years later, to Donnie Yen’s return to the role in Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen. Although initially conceived as a sequel to Fist of Legend, given that it opens in 1917 the absence of a time machine in either movie rather undermines this – it makes more sense to think of it as a sequel to Yen’s TV series minus the final scene. The film kicks off with an action sequence set in the trenches of World War I, where Chen has escaped his fate by joining the 140,000 Chinese labourers sent overseas to assist the British and French in lieu of troops. During the course of this set piece, which establishes Chen’s action hero credentials while maligning the Allied Forces as the sort of people who’d withdraw their troops without concern for the lives of their civilian support personnel, Chen’s best friend Qi Tianyuan is killed in action. Chen and his companions agree to take advantage of this sorry event to fake Chen’s death, with Qi’s sister back in Shanghai – Qi Zhishan (Zhou Yang) – a willing collaborator in the ruse.

Upon their return home, Chen becomes a pianist in a Shanghai nightclub (apocryphally named Casablanca in homage to the 1942 film) run by lovable patriotic gangster Liu Yutian (Anthony Wong), which provides cover for his activities with the underground anti-Japanese resistance movement due to its extensive clientele of foreign dignitaries. One night Chen follows the young General Zeng (Shawn Yue), son of a Chinese warlord, to secret peace-talks with his father’s rival General Zhuo (Ma Yue) only to realise that Japanese troops are lying in wait to sabotage the talks by killing Zeng and blaming his death on Zhuo. Concerned about breaking his cover, Chen makes the convenient discovery that he’s right outside a cinema showing a movie about a masked hero – and, even more conveniently, there’s a display window with a replica of the hero’s costume which just happens to be his size! Donning the outfit in record time – which, in a direct homage to Bruce Lee, looks exactly like the outfit he wore as Kato in The Green Hornet – he saves Zeng’s life and gives him a little speech about the need for China to come together against Japan before beginning a regular moonlighting gig as a pulp hero vigilante protecting the Chinese.

While Chen continues his exploits, he strikes up a relationship with Kiki (Shu Qi), who hits many of the classic femme fatale tropes – attractive nightclub singer fending off the attentions of her boss (good-natured) and patrons (less so), a damaged and conflicted individual with a drinking problem, and – most crucially – one of two spies within the nightclub secretly working for the Japanese. Although her interest in Chen is genuine, it’s not long before her superiors work out that he must be the masked vigilante, ordering her to report back on his movements and associates. Although he works out that she’s a spy, by that point the damage is already done – her superiors have enough information to make a brutal impact on his life. The final section of the film is basically a remake of the climactic confrontation in Fist of Fury set against the backdrop of the 1937 Japanese invasion as Colonel Chikaraishi (Kohata Ryu) – the leader of the forces Chen has been fighting and (by an astonishing coincidence) the son of the General he killed before heading off to the trenches – lures Chen to his father’s dojo, intending to re-stage the scene of his father’s death with a different outcome.

Donnie Yen, appearing here in the dual role of star and action director, is one of Hong Kong’s top action stars and notable for the lengths he takes to invest each of his characters with a fighting style suitable to their character. On record as stating that “Chen Zhen is Bruce Lee”, he avoids direct imitation of Lee for much of the film, choosing instead to honour the spirit of his approach by demonstrating a range of styles drawn from different traditions, much as Lee drew on a range of influences to create his own style of jeet kune do. It’s only in the final sequence that he allows Lee’s style to dominate – dressing in the same style of clothing, wielding nunchaku, emulating specific poses and movements, and making use of Lee’s characteristic vocal style. It’s a tour de force celebration of Lee’s oeuvre which makes no claims to originality but is nonetheless effective as a rousing conclusion.

Although I’ve noted that the setting of this film is more historically appropriate than the earlier versions, it’s got to be said that Legend of the Fist‘s version of Shanghai bears a greater resemblance to a historical theme-park than to any grounded reality. The Shanghai of the earlier parts of the film is all glitz and glamour, a hodgepodge of elements from the 1920s and 1930s thrown together in evocation of an era that never really existed as it’s been remembered through popular culture. As the Japanese gain power and the clock ticks down towards their invasion of China, the glitz and the colour palette begin to fade, colours becoming more and more washed out before finally transitioning to browns and greys. Gone, too, is much of the nuance added to Fist of Legend. The white Europeans are all either racist, incompetent, corrupt, or stupid – or some combination thereof – which, while blatantly stereotypical, does feel like a legitimate and justified perspective for Shanghai’s Chinese inhabitants. The Japanese characters are almost uniformly portrayed as evil, with Kiki being the sole exception – although even Kiki, while despising the results of her actions later in the film, is never really given the chance to redeem herself, continuing to carry out her orders regardless of her personal feelings and only achieving a vague sense of redemption through her pointless death. Apart from Kiki, only the Chinese characters are allowed any sort of complexity, and even then they are all – even the gangsters – unquestionably on the side of Chinese self-governance and unity, differing only on the means to achieve it. Having said that, there have been plenty of Hollywood films which are just as single-minded about American exceptionalism while reveling in much worse racial stereotyping – my feeling is that Legend of the Fist errs on the side of “simplistic” rather than “actively offensive”. (Japanese audiences may well feel differently, but the filmmakers have at least gone to the trouble of recruiting Japanese actors to fill out the cast.)

Director Andrew Lau has an eye for a skilfully composed image, having started in the film industry as a cinematographer and worked in this role with no less a luminary than the renowned Wong Kar-wai on As Tears Go By [Wong Gok ka moon] (1988) and Chungking Express [Chung Hing sam lam] (1994). Although my first encounter with his work as a director was the luscious wuxia epic The Storm Riders [Fung wan: Hung ba tin ha] (1998), he’s probably best known for the crime movie Infernal Affairs [Mou gaan dou] (2002) and its two sequels. Both Shu Qi and Anthony Wong, the most prominent supporting actors, have appeared in many of his films but have substantial careers of their own – Western audiences unfamiliar with their broader careers may recognise Shu Qi from the Jason Statham film The Transporter [Le Transporteur] (2002) and Anthony Wong as General Yang in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008). Among the smaller roles, Zhou Yang stood out to me for her performance as Chen’s sister, although she has one of the those tiny CVs which looks completely different depending on whether you check IMDB or HKMDB – a more detailed cross-check reveals that IMDB have split her career into two separate entries, crediting her for stunt work in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) as Zhou Yang but attributing her other acting roles, including a more prominent billing in Love You You [Xia ri le you you] (2011), to a supposedly separate individual listed as Yang Zhou. (Love You You appears to be her last work in the industry.)

Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen is far from being a sophisticated film, but it looks gorgeous, has some great action sequences and is solidly entertaining – which is pretty much all I was looking for.