Maggie Cheung makes the effort of keeping calm visible in a small movement or a carefully polite reply. We rate her most highly when a film trusts those details; In the Mood for Love gives them room.
Fi1m perspective
In In the Mood for Love (2000), Maggie Cheung’s Su Li-zhen keeps her voice down and her manner composed. The smallest change in her expression asks us to pay closer attention. Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s Chow is just as careful, and their scenes depend on how closely each listens while keeping the conversation polite. We were moved by those exchanges over tea because Cheung makes an ordinary answer seem so difficult to give.
The early parts gave her fewer opportunities to work this way. Playing May opposite Jackie Chan in Police Story (1985) helped establish her, but girlfriend roles also restricted the dramatic work available to her. Wong Kar-wai’s As Tears Go By (1988) marked the turn towards more serious roles. Her subsequent work included Ruan Lingyu in Centre Stage (1991), while Irma Vep (1996) helped widen her international profile. We would not let her skill at restraint obscure that action-comedy background.
The clothes in In the Mood for Love could make Su too easy to admire from a distance. Cheung makes their neatness seem demanding, moving as though she must think about her appearance even when she has more pressing things on her mind. We can see the effort of maintaining good manners in the way she carries herself. Wong occasionally repeats a slow passage after Cheung and Leung have already made the feeling clear, drawing our attention to the direction when we would rather stay with them. We would not want either performance hurried, but those repetitions can make even this deeply moving film feel insistent.
Hero (2002), in which she plays Flying Snow for Zhang Yimou, is a useful corrective to treating restrained romance as her only territory. Clean (2004) was her final leading role before she largely stepped away from acting, with occasional appearances afterwards. We would start with In the Mood for Love, but allow it an evening when nobody needs the story to get a move on.
Biography
Maggie Cheung is a Hong Kong actress. Born on 20 September 1964 in Hong Kong, she moved with her family to the United Kingdom at the age of eight and returned after completing secondary school. She began modelling and appearing in commercials, and in 1983 was first runner-up in the Miss Hong Kong pageant. This led to work in television and film.
Cheung appeared in numerous Hong Kong films in the 1980s and 1990s, including several Police Story entries alongside Jackie Chan. She collaborated frequently with director Wong Kar-wai, playing Su Li-zhen in Days of Being Wild (1990) and In the Mood for Love (2000), and Flying Snow in Hero (2002). Other notable roles include appearances in 2046 (2004) and Clean (2004).
She has received multiple awards, including several Hong Kong Film Awards and Golden Horse Awards for Best Actress. Internationally, she won the Silver Bear for Best Actress for Center Stage (1991) and the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for Clean (2004).
