Thoughts from the committee
Representing the 1980s in our celebration of Wellington Film Society’s history is Tsui Hark’s Peking Opera Blues. With three very serious films from Hong Kong in our main programme, we couldn’t resist throwing this absolute romp into the mix.
In Peking Opera Blues, it’s three very different women who have to ‘play the part’: a revolutionary (Brigitte Lin), a courtesan (Cherie Chung) and an aspiring Peking Opera performer (Sally Yeh). The trio find themselves embroiled in political intrigue with the opportunity to influence the course of 20th century Chinese history. The fact that female roles in Peking Opera were traditionally played by men is an excuse for Tsui and his cast to have a lot of fun with gender roles, especially Lin – who spends most of the film in male drag.
Ostensibly part of the same heroic bloodshed movement as John Woo (and Ringo Lam), Tsui notably forgoes the hyper-masculinity of his peers. Tsui’s action scenes offer the same ecstatic pleasure as Woo’s – this film’s outstanding final set piece is a perfect example – the only difference is he lets women in on the heroic fun.
“There’s no better introduction to the cinema of Tsui Hark than his 1986 masterpiece Peking Opera Blues, a film that seems to draw from all manner of Chinese cultural touchstones to create a wholly unique, breathtakingly constructed confection […] Describing it as a period action-comedy does little justice to its seamless blending of tones, or Tsui’s facility for hurtling movement through the multi-levelled planes of its hermetic sets.” – Matthew Thrift, Where to Begin with Tsui Hark, BFI