#515
Post
by feihong » Sun Jan 03, 2021 12:24 am
I think there are a lot of good kissing scenes in film besides Wong's and Hitchcock's. But it is uncommon for those scenes to come across in swooningly romantic fashion in Chinese-language cinema. I do think that in Chinese-language films Wong is somewhat unique in terms of the way he fetishizes the kissing scene––though Patrick Tam often does the same thing (sometimes, as in Final Victory, with a script from Wong), and I think that the more you look at early Patrick Tam, the more elements you see that Wong takes and fetishizes for his own style. Early Zhang Yimou movies also feature very passionate kissing scenes, as does Lou Ye's Suzhou River, but the context for the kiss is often mediated in a way that intercedes in the fetishization. For instance, the kissing characters in early Zhang films are often adulterers, and it's fairly easily understood that they will pay for their passions later in the film. In Suzhou River, there are layers upon layers of deception in the storytelling, making these scenes resolutely subjective and always a little suspicious. Taiwanese and South Korean films often portray more frank sensual and sexual situations, but they have a similarly intercessory gloom descending upon the scenes, indicating the distance between the people in the scene, the way in which their romantic pursuits provide them with no fulfillment, no satisfaction. I think of the very romantic kiss in Memento Mori, interrupted when one girl bows to social pressure and ultimately pushes the other one away and refutes her passion, or the scene in Yi Yi where Ah-Di gets in bed with his ex clearly expecting intimacy but he ends up watching TV and grousing about his life decisions instead, while his ex turns away to sleep. Or the Hong Sang-Soo movies, where no two people ever seem to enjoy a romantic liaison on anything approaching equivalent terms.
There are a lot of less-than-convincing kisses in Hong Kong cinema––Brigitte Lin used to murder these scenes, not just refusing to open her mouth, but twisting towards the camera to show the audience very clearly that she wasn't participating. I always thought of Leslie Cheung as the hero of Hong Kong movie kissing scenes––no matter social taboo or lack of personal investment, he was a total professional, acting passion in stereo. If he seemed to be going over-the-top sometimes, I think that speaks to the reserve with which most Hong Kong actresses approached those scenes (largely, as I understand it, for reasons of social taboo), and Cheung's ultimate professionalism in attempting to compensate for any lack of return by providing the scene with simply all of the passion expected from both parties. I've also always had a soft spot for Cherie Chung in these kind of scenes––she was an actress who was very, very good at visually conveying the effects of her characters' feelings, so that you could look at her in a film and understand the character had fallen in love, etc. She doesn't have a ton of outright kissing scenes on film (more often this resolved into flirtatious banter), but there are some films where she and Chow Yun-Fat especially deliver very romantic kissing scenes. But on the whole Wong and Tam are, I think fairly unique in making those kisses the entire subject for a scene, per se, and dwelling upon the physical choreography of the moment.
For my money, though, no kiss in Chinese cinema is greeted with more tense anticipation than when Moon Lee bends forward to kiss her vampire grandfather on the lips in Mr. Vampire, drawing out his essence so he can go back to the grave. She acts as if she wishes she could detach her whole moth from her face so it could happen remotely, squinting her eyes like it's the most painful thing she could be expected to do. It does look like sucking in the breath of a reanimated corpse would be the most painful thing one might ever have to do. Best kissing scene ever. That is the gold standard for me.
