Hong Kong filmmaker Stanley Kwan’s 1991 portrait of Ruan Ling-yu is neither documentary nor biopic, but rather an intricately constructed hybrid. Clad in a succession of slinky, geometric-patterned dresses, Maggie Cheung (Police Story) plays the silent-era Shanghai actress from 1929-1935, the period of her greatest success—and greatest infamy.
Like the woman who plays her, Ruan didn't follow patriarchal society's rules, but what made her fascinating to the press and public alike would eventually lead to her downfall. Though Ruan had her joys and triumphs, and Cheung's radiance goes a long way, it's clear that things won't end well.
Her career, for instance, takes off just as her marriage to Chang Ta-Min (Lawrence Ng) is faltering. Unable to have children, she adopts a daughter she loves deeply. Husband, wife, and child live with Ruan's supportive mother who looks after the girl. Kwan (Rouge, Red Rose White Rose) proceeds through several of her films, reconstructing shooting sequences interspersed with archival fragments. Most of her films were lost, so he makes the most of the surviving material. To these sequences, he adds pivotal moments with friends and family, interviews with the film's cast, and commentary from Chinese film figures, like director Sun Yu.
Tensions with Chang continue after divorce when she is forced to pay alimony. Though she falls in love again, Tang Chi-Shan (Han Chin) is married. That doesn't stop them from setting up a household together, but when Chang finds out, he sues her for adultery in a bid to pay off his gambling debts while humiliating her as much as possible. She does her best not to let any of this domestic turbulence affect her work.
When her 1935 film, New Women, which offers a pointed critique of the tabloid press, faces calls for cuts, she stands up for director Cai Chusheng's vision. As her relationship with Tang loses steam, she falls in love with Cai (Tony Ka Fai Leung), who returns her affection, but refuses to leave his wife and child. This confluence of events would lead to Ruan Ling-yu's death by suicide at the age of 24.
In a different time or place, things might not have taken such a dire turn, and Cheung makes it easy to care about Ruan even as her open-heartedness leads her to some perilous places. In the accompanying interview, Kwan notes that critics didn't always take Cheung seriously, since she was a former beauty pageant contestant with active love life. It makes Center Stage poignant in ways he might not have intended because she would effectively retire in 2010 after years of "mosquito press" coverage, an unfortunate echo of Ruan's experience more than 50 years before.
Fortunately for audiences, her performance easily measures up to her heartfelt turn in Wong Kar-wai's acclaimed In the Mood for Love. If Center Stage represents the more difficult proposition, it confirms her status as one of Hong Kong's brightest and most beautiful stars. As Kwan asks in the film, "Is it advantageous for a movie star to vanish at the peak of her brilliance?" Highly recommended.