Wing Chun (Yong Chun, 1994)

Yuen Woo-ping

Hong Kong

97 mins, color, Mandarin (English subtitles)

Review © 2001, 2006 Branislav L. Slantchev

This scholar protected by a girl	Honestly, what do you think about the Communist Party?

This is a very light-hearted comedy of errors with tons of wire work (aka high-flying cheesy martial arts) that stars the delectable Michelle Yeoh (as Wing Chun) and the fast-moving Donnie Yen (as the implausibly confused Leung Pok-To). There is a fight scene in every odd-numbered frame of the film, so don't expect much philosophical insight (although Confucius does get an honorable mention). This movie is usually recommended as one of the best examples of chick flicks for men --- say it ain't so, Xena --- so, you should obviously watch it for just that reason. You can also then sneer at your more ignorant buddies when they talk about the "Crouching Tiger" chick and educate them about Michelle's illustrious past.

The Beauty and... the other Beauty	Auditions for tofu shop waitress

The film proves that the fourth basic comedy plot, a confusion of mistaken identities, still works just as fine as it did during the Elizabethan era. And it does not even have to rhyme anymore. The story is about three unmarried women and two men who woo them. It is "them" because the men really don't know which one(s) they are supposedly wooing. There are some genuinely hilarious footage of the slapstick variety, and a bunch of verbal abuse that seems to have been lost in translation. Some of the funny bits still come through, so it's generally pleasant to watch. Unfortunately, I have the ridiculously bad HK DVD with permanent English and Chinese subtitles, so I can't say more about that. If you are a fan of wire-work, you may like this film. If you think it looks stupid or offends the modicum of physics you learned in high school, then you will quite possibly hate it.

Gratuitous shot of Catherine Hung Yan	Nineteenth Century Girls Gone Wild Pajama Party

One of the elements that the film has going for it, is doubtless the strong female leads. There's a whooping three of them, and they all kick and scream although only one fights. If you want to see where the creators of Xena got ALL of their inspiration from, you need not look further than this film. That includes the premise, the cinematography, and the action sequences. If Xena ever gets married, you'd have Wing Chun minus the evil past, unless you count her first marriage as evil. Of course, there are also your basic villains, who can be identified by the fact that they live in shabby caves or castles with no walls, tend to abduct women, terrorize innocent bystanders, demolish nonbreakable objects for no good reason, and get invariably defeated by the heroine. In "Wing Chun," there's also the twist that the thieves gave up their thieving ways.

A real man uses his mouth to fight, not his hands	Flying Monkey with medieval paraphernalia

A note about the DVD. Do not, I repeat, do not buy the cheap Chinese version that I got suckered into getting. The image quality is substandard, even for a HK film. There's a lot of bleeding, irregular colors, and intolerable pixellation that turns every non-still frame into a whirlwind of huge blocky squares. It's hard to tell what's going on, especially with the night scenes. The sound is also really really bad with lots of noise. The English subtitles are non-removable, which is not a problem, but neither are the simplified Chinese subs, which is. This version defaults to Mandarin, which is no surprise, even though the movie itself is in Cantonese. I think there's a Tai Seng-distributed version at the usual outrageous price, so it all depends on how deep your pockets are.

April 5, 2001. BLS

Guess which one just got laid	Compassion is not Norman Chu's strong suit

2006 update on account of buying the DVD from Hong Kong Legends. As usual, I am not in the habit of revising my old reviews, but since the new release is so much better than the crappy disc I used to have, I just cannot resist illustrating the review with some screen caps from this edition and, naturally, taking a fresh look at this film. Reading my old review I can't help but notice that I never did mention the most important part of the film: it reeks of political incorrectness despite the abundance of strong female leads. Plus, the humor now is a lot easier to grasp because the new subtitles have at least been looked at by native English speakers.

Even with wires this still takes ballerina skills	Donnie Yen is... BENDER!

Admittedly, some of the humor is of the low-brow variety that would not be terribly funny even if you did know what rancid tofu smells like. However, Waise Lee's antics come through a lot better in this version. My favorite scene is where he finally gets around to "proposing" (actually, he finally gets roped into marriage) to Abacus Fong (Kingdom Yuen King-Tan, who, by the way, is by far the prettiest of the three girls). A closeup in wide angle shows the abacus in his hand, and then he retracts it to start some quick calculations of the profitability of the proposed union. It's just so well done that him standing behind the two women and continuing the actuarial judo is just icing on the cake.

No, I love you more!	Wing Chun deconstructing a wall

Similarly, Donnie Yen's pining for Wing Chun regardless of whether he thinks she is Michelle Yeoh or Catherine Hung Yan is a sight to behold. We don't usually get to see Donnie in this slapstick light-hearted role (not to mention that he gets regularly beat up), and he manages to give the potentially mawkish fireside chat scene with Michelle a comedic flair that saves it from degenerating into a "I love you more" insipidness.

Cheng Pei-pei in a brief cameo	Romantic prenup

As for the un-PC message, the film never pretends to be anything other than an affirmation of traditionally male (I hesitate to say "Chinese") view of what women are supposed to do and how they are supposed to function in society, polite or otherwise. Wing Chun herself apparently chose to render herself non-marriage material by acquiring martial arts skills (this she did to escape the lust of a man she was supposed to marry). But she is clearly pained by ageing without a male partner, as the scene in which she sees the much younger widow Yim Neung donning her old clothes and being perky and obviously attractive. Even Abacus Fong's professed disinterest in the male species is fake, a facade she has to keep up until she finds just the man she wants (the scheming scholar, of course). None of these girls can find herself without the assistance of a man even though they are supposedly strong.

Ad for abstinence from premarital sex	Obligatory gratuitous shot of Michelle Yeoh

In fact, when Flying Chimp (Norman Chu) tells Wing Chun that he wishes to marry her to tame her, he is not far from the truth in guessing what she secretly longs for. His problem is that he is not the one she wants. When Leung Pak To (Donnie Yen) finally gets to his senses and transfers his affections to the real Wing Chun, she is all too happy to oblige. In fact, she only gets her strength after following her sifu's (Cheng Pei-pei in a cameo) advice and succumbs to Leung's quite honestly expressed desires. She is now complete, with a marriage forthcoming, so she can kick Flying Chimp's ass without much further ado. It's funny to see her appear in women's clothes for a change at the end of the film, and sport a coiffure that does justice to her features. To read a lot in Flying Chimp's choice of a long and thick spear as a weapon would probably just be the intention of Yuen Woo-ping, so I won't do it. It's quite transparent in the overt sexuality of the confrontation.

Norman Chu under the delusion that size matters more than what you do with it	Wing Chun can't lose now that she's a WOMAN

The HKL DVD is very good and I can finally see the film the way it was supposed to be seen. The 1.85:1 OAR anamorphic widescreen transfer is gorgeous (and even now I can't see the wires!) I listened to the Cantonese soundtrack with the optional English subtitles. There's an English dub but who, the hell, wants these things? There is an audio commentary by Bey Logan that I did not bother with and interviews with Donnie Yen and Norman Chu which are actually quite fun to watch (and they do give plenty of detail about the filming, including the curious bit that Michelle Yeoh was not even on the set for the entire fight sequence with Flying Monkey that Donnie Yen shot at night with real fires). Clearly, this is the way to own this film, and own it you want to, if nothing else than at least for the fight on a spear shaft sequence. You won't see any real Wing Chun style but it's fun nonetheless.

December 29, 2006