1993: Green Snake
(director, producer)
Two snakes transform
into two beautiful ladies in order to discover and to learn about mankind. White Snake
(Joey Wong) falls in love with a scholar, whereas Green Snake (Maggie Cheung) wants to
find out what is love. She draws the attention of a Buddhist monk (Zhao Wen-zhou) who
hunts down 'non-human-beings'.
This film was very ambitious not only on the technical front but also on the themes point
of view. It unfortunately suffered from production difficulties, which resulted in bad
special effects. But it will be too easy to condemn such film just because of a few poor
SFX. Tsui Hark dared to propose an analysis on religions and their intolerance. Moreover,
he dealt with the question of love and its existence with courage, boldness and
metaphysic! On the aesthetic side, he wanted to create an artificial world which
perfection would make forget its nature. He didn't achieve this goal, but Tsui Hark
phantasms have revealed his high cinematic ambitions.
1994: Burning Paradise
(producer)
After destroying the Shaolin Temple, the Red Lotus sect hunts down the surviving monks.
Fong Sai-yuk is captured and sent to the Red Lotus temple, a gigantic jail full of booby
traps and governed by a bloodthirsty psycho.
This movie was a big flop at the HK box office. There is not any info available about this
collaboration between Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam. How to distinguish the work of a director
from another then? There are this labyrinth aspect inherited directly from Butterfly
Murder and a sense of gory effects common to both directors. The result is wonderful
since it mixes the pleasure of being immersed into a horror atmosphere mixed with
political thoughts on the future of Hong-Kong, plus great martial arts!
1994: The Lovers
(director, producer)
A rich couple send their daughter (Charlie Young) to a college
for boys in order to perfect her education and to marry her to a high ranked dignitary.
Dressed as a boy, the young and mischievous girl falls in love with a brilliant but
penniless student (Nicky Wu).
Tsui Hark delivers a crystal clear mise-en-scene, a simple story but with very complex
sub-texts. He masterfully deals with the questions of love, freedom and art. A loving
glance is for instance a compulsory thing in romantic stories. Here, it happens at the end
of a lengthy travelling sequence, full of shot, reverse shot patterns, until the eyes of
both lovers finally meet. This very moment arises from movements but it is also
characterised by its immobility. That is what the whole movie is based on. It's a poetry
of pictures rarely achieve by any other directors.
1994: Once Upon A Time In
China 5 (director, producer)
Coming back home, Wong Fei-hung (Zhao Wen-zhou) discovers that a group of pirates wreck
havoc. He decides to dispense justice and to stop definitively the wrongdoers.
Tsui Hark makes a new instalment of the Wong Fei-hung saga that was widely acclaimed early
nineties. The last episode is far from the ambitious first three. The saga has now turned
into a mere commercial exploitation. Entertainement is therefore the priority here. But
Tsui Hark doesn't totally forget his obsessions, with for instance the description of the
control of the local authority by the pirates, a situation that refers to other movies
from the Film Workshop Company. There isn't, however, any single sea battle, considered
generally as the greatest moments of pirate movies. A shame!
1995: The Chinese Feast
(director, producer)
In order to emigrate to Canada, a young gang leader wants to learn traditional Chinese
cookery. He got hired in a famous Hong Kong restaurant. There, he meets the chef daughter,
a young punk girl (Anita Yuen) who dreams of France... Together, they'll help out the chef
to prepare the Qin Han feast and to challenge another great chef.
Tsui Hark tried to be commercially very successful with this Chinese New Year comedy. Not
only he archived his goal but he also made a very nice and entertaining movie. It could
have been a masterpiece though, if the script was a bit more rigorous and if the director
was a bit more regular with his sense of humour.
1995: Love In The Time Of
Twilight (director, producer)
In the early years of the 20th century, the daughter
(Charlie Young) of a Cantonese Opera company manager is looking for love. She keeps
bumping into a young bank clerk (Nicky Wu) and argues with him all the time. He gets
murdered and comes back to seek help from the girl. They both go back in time and try to
avoid the murder to be committed.
Tsui Hark brings together again the couple of stars from The Lovers to set a
fantastic comedy. He skilfully mixes comedy, romance and action. The movie is above all
characterised by a huge inventiveness: ghosts, electric shock to travel through time,
special effects… But, the sense of humour might appear a bit too 'Cantonese' for
some, with scatological gags for instance (a guy (Eric Kot) keeps vomiting all the
time…).
1995: The Blade
(director, producer)
Dig On (Zhao Wen-zhou) decides to avenge the
horrible death of his father, a famous swordsman. But he loses one of his arms during a
fight and decides to create an one-armed fighting style…
After the success of the Swordsman series, Tsui hark decides to make another Wu Xia
Pian (from Wu Xia: Chinese chivalry genre and Pian: film) freely inspired
from the famous Chang Cheh's One-Armed Swordsman. Tsui Hark creates once more a new
aesthetic format constituted of noise and fury. The audience is therefore taken to a dark
and chaotic world where violence is everywhere. This is another great masterpiece full of
tremendous martial arts!
1996: Tri-Star
(director, producer)
A
young priest (Leslie Cheung) decides to help out a prostitute (Anita Yuen) who is
threatened to be sent to work in the USA.
A year after Chinese Feast, Tsui Hark makes another Chinese New Year comedy with
the same main casts. Since The Lovers, Tsui Hark invariably talks of love the same
way: a man and a woman get together with great difficulties, because of their awkwardness
and the public eye. Intimacy moments are therefore rare and short-lived, but very intense.
With humour and tenderness, Tsui Hark always manages to add a few moments of pure romantic
poetry in his movies. In Tri-Star, such moment is for instance when Anita Yuen
gives a kiss to the priest in the darkness. Although the comedy part of the movie works
well, the pace of the second part is much slower. There are songs one after another
probably to make up for the lack of substance in the script. The film is therefore average
but far better than its unjustified bad reputation.
