Farewell China (Clara Law, 1990)

Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Ka-fai in Farewell China

Cast: Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Hayley Man, Lester Chit-Man Chan, Hung Chun, Jun Liao. Screenplay: Eddie Ling-Ching Fong. Cinematography: Jingle Ma. Art direction: Lee Lok-Si. Film editing: Ma Kam. Music: Jim Shum.

Despite a narrative clotted with flashbacks, some scenes that don't seem to fit, and an unsteadiness of tone, Clara Law's Farewell China remains a vivid, sometimes harrowing look at Chinese immigrants in New York City. Maggie Cheung gives a dazzling performance as Li Hung, who leaves her husband, Zhao Nansan (Tony Leung Ka-fai) and their infant son in China to seek work in New York. When Nansan stops hearing from Hung, he finds his way to the city to search for her. Hayley Man gives a lively performance as a 15-year-old Chinese-American runaway from her family in Detroit, who steals and turns tricks as she aids Nansan in his search through the city's lower depths.  

Comrades: Almost a Love Story (Peter Ho-Sun Chan, 1996)

Maggie Cheung and Leon Lai in Comrades: Almost a Love Story

Cast: Maggie Cheung, Leon Lai, Eric Tsang, Kristy Yeung, Christopher Doyle, Tung Cho "Joe" Cheung, Irene Tsu, Yu Ting, Michelle Gabriel. Screenplay: Ivy Ho. Cinematography: Jingle Ma. Production design: Chung-Man Yee. Film editing: Ki-Hop Chan, Chi-Leung Kwong. Music: Tsang-Hei Chiu. 

Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-Wai, 1990)

Leslie Cheung and Maggie Cheung in Days of Being Wild

Cast: Leslie Cheung, Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, Carina Lau, Rebecca Pan, Jacky Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu-wai. Screenplay: Jeffrey Lau, Wong Kar-Wai. Cinematography: Christopher Doyle. Production design: William Chang. Film editing: Kai Kit-Wai, Patrick Tam. Music: Terry Chan. 

As Tears Go By (Wong Kar-Wai, 1988)

Cast: Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, Jacky Cheung, Alex Man, Ronald Wong, Ang Wong, Huang Pa-Ching. Screenplay: Jeffrey Lau, Wong Kar-Wai. Cinematography: Andrew Lau. Production design: William Chang. Film editing: Cheong Bei-Dak, Kai Kit-Wai. Music: Danny Chung, Teddy Robin Kwan.

It takes mastery of a genre to transcend that genre, as Martin Scorsese did with the gangster film and Douglas Sirk did with the romantic melodrama, and Wong Kar-Wai does just that with his first feature, As Tears Go By. Scorsese looms larger here, in that his Mean Streets (1973) was an acknowledged influence on Wong’s film, but I can’t help seeing touches of Sirk in the portrayal of the romance between Wah (Andy Lau) and Ngor (Maggie Cheung). Yet Wong is very much his own man, and the film is a smashing (in all senses of the word) success full of fire and energy, yet able to show the ameliorating effect that Ngor has on the initially standoffish Wah, preoccupied with making his way in the underworld and defending his friend Fly (Jacky Cheung). The use on the soundtrack of Sandy Lam’s version of Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock’s Oscar-winning “Take My Breath Away” evokes its source, Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986), but it also accentuates the pop-culture-saturated milieu in which the action and the romance take place. 

Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002)

Cast: Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Chen Daoming, Donnie Yen, Zhongyuan Liu, Tianyong Zheng, Yan Qin, Chang Xiao Yang. Screenplay: Feng Li, Zhang Yimou, Bin Wang. Cinematography: Christopher Doyle. Production design: Tingxiao Huo, Zhenzhou Yi. Film editing: Angie Lam, Vincent Lee. Costume design: Emi Wada. Music: Tan Dun.

Visually, one of the most beautiful films ever made, Hero is a ravishing blend of color, texture, pattern, and movement, with spectacular locations that range from desert to mountain, from forest to lake. If it had as much to please the mind as it does the eye -- and ear, counting Tan Dun's score -- it might have been one of the great films. It's a fable about the emergence of China as a nation under its first emperor, using a Rashomon-like narrative structure in which we get various versions of the story of how a swordsman known as Nameless (Jet Li) vanquished three assassins -- Sky (Donnie Yen), Broken Sword (Tony Leung), and Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung) -- to earn the right to come within ten paces of the king of Qin (Chen Daoming), in other words, to come within killing distance of the ruler. Nameless first tells his story, and then the king responds with his own theory about what really happened. A true version, in which Nameless is revealed as the real assassin, finally emerges. The result is to give us flashbacks to a variety of fight sequences, involving some astonishing wire work in several breathtaking settings, the most memorable of which may be the duel in the yellow leaves of an autumnal forest between Flying Snow and Moon (Zhang Ziyi), Broken Sword's apprentice and rival with Snow for his love. In the end, however, the film seems to have no real point to make other than the need for strong and powerful leadership, which is not exactly a positive statement in these days.

Police Story 2 (Jackie Chan, 1988)

Jackie Chan and Keung-Kuen Lai in Police Story 2

Cast: Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Kwok-Hung Lam, Bill Tung, Keung-Kuen Lai, John Cheung, Charlie Cho, Yuen Chor, Ben Lam, Chi Fai Chan, Shan Kwan, Isabella Wong, Ann Mui. Screenplay: Jackie Chan, Paul B. Clay, Edward Tang. Cinematography: Yiu-Tsou Cheung, Yu-Tang Li. Production design: Oliver Wong. Film editing: Peter Cheung. Music: Yao-Tsu Chang, J. Peter Robinson, Siu-Lam Tang.

Jackie Chan's hyperactive policeman Cha Ka-Kui has been demoted to traffic as a result of the mayhem in the first Police Story film, but he bounds back under threat from his old enemies. There's a lot more pyrotechnics in this installment, thanks to the explosives wizardry of the film's chief villain, a deaf mute played by Keung-Kuen Lai.

Police Story (Jackie Chan, Chi-Hwa Chen, 1985)

Jackie Chan and Ken Tong in Police Story

Cast: Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Brigitte Lin, Kwok-Hung Lam, Bill Tung, Yuen Chor, Charlie Cho, Chi-Wing Lau, Hark-On Fung, Hing-Yin Kam, Mars, Tai-Bo, Ken Tong. Screenplay: Jackie Chan, Edward Tang. Cinematography: Yiu-Tsou Cheung. Production design: Oliver Wong. Film editing: Peter Cheung. Music: Kevin Bassinson.

Jackie Chan's debt to Buster Keaton has never been more fully displayed, or indeed more fully repaid, than in Police Story, which has a Keatonian moment when he latches onto a passing bus with the crook of an umbrella. Chan plays a cop who goes from hero to goat and back again in this story of an almost one-man crusade against a drug lord. The climax involves the near-total destruction of a shopping mall, with one spectacular set-up after another.

In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)

In the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound critics' poll of the greatest films of all time, Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love placed at No. 24, in a tie with Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) and Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955). I have to admit that I wouldn't rank it quite so high, especially putting it on a par with the other two films, but its intense, elliptical love story -- one in which there is no nudity, no sex scenes, and in fact not even a consummation of the affair -- is certainly unique and challenging. It's a film whose claustrophobic settings occasionally reminded me of the below-deck scenes in L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934). The would-be lovers, Chow (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung), are as trapped in their Hong Kong rooms as the newlyweds in L'Atalante are on their river barge, with the additional limitations that they are trapped in their marriages, in their offices, and in the social conventions of the 1960s. In one marvelous sequence she is trapped in his room when their landlady, Mrs. Suen (Rebecca Pan), comes home earlier than expected and then stays up all night playing mahjong with the neighbors, preventing her from leaving and adding fuel to the gossip but also fueling their intimacy. It's a masterstroke that we never see their respective spouses or even receive direct confirmation of what Chow and Su Li-zhen suspect: that her husband and his wife are having an affair with each other. They can't redouble the scandal by openly pairing off with each other, and in the end the paralysis becomes so ingrained in them that they are unable to consummate their relationship even when they are liberated from their claustrophobic living arrangements. Wong makes the most of the cinematography of Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bin, framing them in the clutter of the offices where they work, focusing intensely on them as they meet in restaurants, using a variety of techniques such as slow motion and swish-pans, always with the effect of emphasizing their alienation. The score is often exquisitely appropriate, with themes by Michael Galasso and Shigeru Umebayashi as well as pop recordings by Nat King Cole and others. The historical references -- the tension evident in Hong Kong as it approaches the handover by Britain to China, a 1966 newsreel featuring Charles de Gaulle, Chow's final scene in Angkor Wat -- strike me as an unnecessary attempt to give the relationship of Chow and Su a connection to something larger than just a frustrated love affair. The story is poignant and resonant enough without them.