China's Garbo? - Chinese actress Gong Li - Interview

Interview, May, 1997 by Scarlet Cheng

Gong Li has a reputation for being as aloof and unknowable as she appears onscreen, but now she's lowering her guard

There are some divine contradictions in Gong Li, greatest icon of China's Fifth Generation cinema. Her imperious feline beauty is qualified by a certain voluptuousness, he high cheekbones and jutting jawline are softened by liquid eyes and full lips. She could rip your throat out with a stroke - or your heart with her heartache. In films like Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern (1991) and To Live (1994), she is off-puttingly chilly at first; then she reveals the fragility at the core of her characters. She is just as likely to play a bitchy prostitute or mistress - which she did, respectively, in Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine (1993) and Zhang's Shanghai Triad (1995) - as an aggrieved peasant determined to best the authorities, her role in Zhang's The Story of Qiu Ju (1993). Gong distances herself from all her parts, but comparisons are inevitable. Zhang, the director who discovered her in 1987 and became her lover, has acknowledged her headstrong ways. She treated me frostily when I interviewed her for the first time four years ago; she simply did not want to be there.

Since then she has relaxed. At last year's Cannes Film Festival, I watched her prepare a meal for twenty without a hint of the princessly hauteur she brings to Chen's Temptress Moon, the dynastic drama she was there to promote and that opened in America last month. Last spring, after a two-year courtship, she married Ooi Hoe-Seong, an urbane Singapore businessman based in Honk Kong. Some credit their relationship for Gong's new confidence in dealing with the outside world. In any case, when we met for the following interview - in a sky-high lounge in Hong Kong's Shangri-la Hotel - she was as serene as could be.

SCARLET CHENG: Ruyi, the character you play in Temptress Moon, has grown up spoiled within a walled palace garden, breathing in the smoke of opium. She doesn't seem of this world at all. How do you prepare for a role like that? Did you have lengthy discussions with Chen Kaige?

GONG LI: Not really. Chen Kaige allows you plenty of leeway. You get clues from the dialogue. There's a tough edge to a lot of what the character says. That gives an impression that she's spoiled. Even though my voice [as Ruyi] is soft, her will is very strong, so she projects this sense of quiet power. The biggest difficulty in playing Ruyi was that her character isn't very obvious, unlike the women I played in Ju Dou [1989, Zhang Yimou], Raise the Red Lantern, and To Live. From the beginning of Raise the Red Lantern. you can sense the character's spirit. If the girl in Temptress Moon didn't have scenes that convey her internalized strength, you'd think she was just a lazy, coy little thing. There aren't many chances for her to expose her inner self.

SC: Temptress Moon is very pessimistic about love. You've played tragic women before. In Ju Dou, you presumably committed suicide. In Raise the Red Lantern, you went mad.

GL: That's because they were period films, and in the old days women had a hard time: the more rebellious you were, the more social pressure you got. Back in the '20s and '30s, even the lucky ones had to put up with maybe six or seven wives and concubines [in the household]. If you couldn't put up with it, you could fight it until you died. If you could, you'd have clothes to wear, food to eat, but your love life ...

SC: Qiu Ju [in The Story of Qiu Ju] was different.

GL: That's because she's contemporary. She's able to fight for what she wants because she lives in a modern society. It's my favorite role.

SC: Have you felt social pressures yourself in recent years?

GL: Not particularly. I don't care anymore. Let people say what they will. In the past, if a woman transgressed - if she had an illicit affair - they'd punish her, drown her in the sea. These days you can do anything, unless it's illegal. Or unless you care a lot about public opinion.

SC: What about when Hong Kong newspapers report things that aren't true about you?

GL: Honk Kong journalists write a lot of junk. European and American journalists treat me with more respect. If I don't see what people write about me, they don't bother me. If I do, I'll curse them out in my heart. So I laugh it all off. The only pressures I have are the ones I give myself. Just give me a chance to prove I can do the work.

SC: Where does your self-confidence come from?

GL: I live my way, that's it. Every human has frustrations and unhappinesses, but hopefully they pass.

SC: Is that optimism, or are you just being forthright?

GL: Forthright? I dunno - am I forthright?

SC: Zhang Yimou once used that word to describe you.

GL: Maybe it's true. I don't like a lot of hassling about. If you can compromise on something, compromise. Otherwise, drop it and deal with it later. That's my attitude toward my work life, anyway. Living that way is a happier way, If you want to do something but you're afraid to do it, then that's the biggest bore in the world.