Zhang Fengyi makes authority feel ordinary: his soldiers and historical leaders seem accustomed to being obeyed. We value him most in Farewell My Concubine, where that steady presence makes an unequal attachment painful.
Fi1m perspective
In Farewell My Concubine (1993), Zhang Fengyi’s Xiaolou shares a life on stage with Dieyi without being consumed by their bond. Beside Leslie Cheung’s demanding devotion, Zhang gives the impression of a man for whom the partnership can be enough as it is. He does not have to match Cheung’s intensity to make their scenes hurt. We found the unequal attachment painful because their continuing work together keeps giving Dieyi reasons to hope. Zhang’s relative composure leaves that hope unanswered without making Xiaolou impossible to understand.
His breakthrough lead was Xiangzi in Rickshaw Boy (1982), before Farewell My Concubine brought international recognition. The later historical parts make sense for someone with such physical poise, though they can encourage us to notice his authority first and his acting second. He worked again with Chen Kaige, the director of Farewell My Concubine, as Jing Ke in The Emperor and the Assassin (1998). For John Woo, he played Cao Cao in Red Cliff (2008), returning to the role in its sequel.
He is persuasive as men who expect their decisions to stand, particularly the soldiers and officers that recur in his work. His physical poise suits those parts, and their stubbornness feels like a settled habit rather than a sudden show of temper. His forcefulness in Red Cliff can become overemphatic. In Farewell My Concubine, his partner’s longing gives him something more difficult to play than a man accustomed to obedience: someone whose affection has limits that another person cannot accept.
Kaige’s melodrama sometimes pushes the suffering too hard, but Zhang, Cheung and Gong Li make its tangled affections worth staying with. Zhang’s contribution is easy to undervalue if we look only for the most visibly tormented performance. The scale of the events never makes the disappointment between the two men seem small. Start with Farewell My Concubine, provided there is time for a long and sometimes punishing evening.
Biography
Zhang Fengyi is a Chinese actor. He was born on 1 September 1956 in Changsha, Hunan. His ancestral home is in Tanghe, Henan; the family moved to Dongchuan, Yunnan when he was one month old. He left school in 1971 and joined a local opera troupe, later transferring to a singing and dancing team. In 1978 he was admitted to the acting department of the Beijing Film Academy.
His film debut came in Treasure Hunting in the Desert (1980). He is known for the role of Duan Xiaolou in Farewell My Concubine (1993), Jing Ke in The Emperor and the Assassin (1998), and Cao Cao in Red Cliff (2008) and Red Cliff II (2009). Other credits include The Blue Kite (1994), Sacrifice (2010) and the television series In the Name of the People (2017).
