AC Team's Wendy
Chan was invited to interview the stars of "In the Mood for Love,"
at a round table discussion at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles.
A Wong Kar-wai
film, "In the Mood for Love," a USA Films release, marks the fifth
film that both Maggic Cheung and Tony Leung, two of Hong Kong's
most famed and admired movie stars have appeared in. Maggie has
worked with Wong Kar-wai four times.
more
on Maggie Cheung Man-yuk
AC
Team: I want to ask you about your dresses in the film. They are very
pretty.
Maggie
Cheung: We can start with that! (Laughter) Well, they
were not exactly easy to wear, because we're in very comfortable
clothes these days, and it took me some time to get used to the
dresses, to actually feel natural in them, because they really gave
me a lot of limitations on my movement.
Because I remember
at the beginning of the shoot, Kar-wai would say, "You've been this
lazy thing on the bed, you just stretch yourself and reach out and
get something," and I tried to do that and you reach out and all
the poppers come off and the whole dress would come open, and I
said, "You know, I don't think I can do that."
And he goes,
"No, I don't think that's a good idea." But from that, I think that's
how the character was built in the end, because of the limitations
of her movement, that she became very reserved and restrained on
how she held herself as a person.
AC
Team: Did you pick them yourself?
Cheung:
No, we had a real good art director who found the fabrics and got
them custom made for me. And each one of them had to be fitted about
five to six times to get it really perfect.
Q:
How do you think the audience in general, particularly the Asian
audience, will react to the topic of infidelity, which isn't often
talked about in public?
Cheung:
Well, I think that there have been lots of films made on this subject,
on affairs or simply love. But this one is a little different in
the way that it was told. It's the same subject that we've known?�from
millions of other films, but this one somehow leaves a lot of space
for the audience to interpret what really happens to these two people.
The film only suggests, this is the situation, so what really happens
is up to the audience. And I think it becomes less offensive, because
you are not made to believe in something.
Q:
Tony told us that this was a sort of revenge movie. How about you?
Cheung:
I think this woman is more the victim than his character in the
film, and I think also my character is probably somebody who has
been through some kind of pain or rejection in her life that she
built a wall. And looking how she looks, it's something that she
needs to hide the fragile side of her. She looks very proper and
beautiful and straight to other people.
But I think
his character had the motivation for revenge, but for me it's more
direct. It's like I needed this person to share this with me after
I found out about my husband and his wife that my world was shattered,
and I really didn't know how to react to it. And he was the only
person there who could share this with me, and somehow along the
way we built something on our own.
Q:
How is preparing a role for a Wong Kar-wai film different than preparing
any role for other directors?
Cheung:
Well, basically there is no preparation. (Laughter) I mean I did
try to prepare once I found out it was a film on an affair. I tried
to think about it and imagine it and asked many questions like,
"What should I do? What is my character?"
And Kar-wai
would give me answers that are not true, which I would find out
very soon after he tells me, okay, this is what you do. I'll say,
"Oh okay, I'll go home and be happy for two days because I have
something to work on," but three days later it's like, "That's not
what you told me the other day. This is something else." And I'll
be constantly??for the first few months of the shoot, being very
disappointed and frustrated and angry at him. "What's going on?"
You know? I need to have some structure to work on.
But finally
in the end I just gave up on that and didn't try anything else.
I just went with the flow and realized this is the way it's going
to be. We are going to work on the script and the characters and
the mood for the film along the way with what we shot. We looked
at the dailies from the day before, and then talked about what was
good and what was bad from that day, and it was built from there.
So it was a very unusual way, but in the end it worked out.
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Related:
AC
Interviews Actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai
AC Interviews Actress Maggie Cheung Man-yuk
AC
Interviews Director Wong Kar-wai
In the Mood
for Love (Movie Review by AC Team's Solange Castro Belcher)
About In the
Mood for Love
Official
Site
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