Stanley Kwan Kam-Pang

At first glance, Stanley Kwan would seem to be working in the tradition of Douglas Sirk, Vincente Minnelli and R.W. Fassbinder--bold visual stylists utilizing yet transcending the conventions of screen melodrama to achieve their more serious artistic goals. Kwan differs from his predecessors in that he eschews irony in favor of sincere romance. Whereas they made emotionally intense films with lurid colors and big emotions, Kwan has created a more serene and modest film universe that is equally gorgeous and reflexive. His "Rouge" (1988) and "The Actress/Center Stage" (1991) are explicitly concerned with the movies and the lost past they evoke. Kwan's films are particularly unusual in the context of a national cinema prized by cultish Westerners for their crazy energy and over-the-top situations. Many of the kids who cheer at Jackie Chan and groove to John Woo are nonplused by these "women's pictures." More sophisticated cineastes have pointed to Kwan and Wong Kar-wai as two of the few original film artists working in the commercial Hong Kong film industry. (They also share a favored cinematographer in Christopher Doyle.) Instead of stunts and gunfights, Kwan's films serve up both beautiful people and sumptuous mise-en-scene. Michael Atkinson has written (in FILM COMMENT, May/June 1996), "... His images are deep, precise, and warm, jam-packed with mirrors, scrims, doorways, and burnished tchotchkes."