Wing Chun (1994)

Wing Chun (1994)
Chinese Title: 詠春
Translation: Wing Chun (or Yongchun in Mandarin)

 

Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen Ji-Dan, Waise Lee Chi-Hung, Kingdom Yuen King-Tan, Catherine Hung Yan, Norman Tsui Siu-Keung, Cheng Pei-Pei, Chui A-Fai, Xu Xiang-Dong
Director: Yuen Woo-Ping
Action Director: Yuen Woo-Ping, Yuen Shun-Yee, Donnie Yen

 

As I always like pointing out, the unwritten rule of kung fu movies during the early 90s wire-fu craze was that they either were a) remakes of Shaw Brothers films or b) about a Chinese folk hero. Most of the time, Wong Fei-Hung or any of his contemporaries sufficed for these movies. Of course, semi-legendary figures like Fong Sai-Yuk and Hung Hey-Kwun also got their fair share of representation. Interestingly enough, not many female martial artists got their due during this period, even though the concurrent wuxia films were brimming with beautiful women on wires.

I suppose that has something to do with the dearth of female Chinese folk heroes to tell stories about. There is obviously Hua Mulan, whose story hadn’t become well known in the West during this time, and who hadn’t been the subject of a Hong Kong film since the 1960s. There is a Fu Hao, a famous female military officer and concubine to the Shang Emperor who lived in the 13^th century B.C. There is also Fang Qiniang, the founder of the Fujian White Crane style, whose story was sorta told in the 1979 film The Crane Fighters. And let’s not forget Ma Suzhen, who was the subject of a handful of kung fu movies in the early 70s, and had gotten a PRC wushu film about her in the late 1980s. But for some reason, none of these women inspired Hong Kong filmmakers in the 1990s.

Perhaps the reason was that by 1990, there weren’t enough bankable female martial arts stars to pull off this sort of movie. Mainstream actresses like Anita Mui, Maggie Cheung and Brigitte Lin (and their stunt doubles) were getting lots of roles, but they had mainstream crossover appeal. The Girls n’ Guns movement was quickly losing steam: Moon Lee was working more and more for television, Yukari Oshima was more active in the Philippines, Kara Hui Ying-Hung was mainly getting supporting roles, as was Sibelle Hu. There was Cynthia Khan, who seemed to find steady work in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan, and on TV. I’m not sure why she wasn’t cast for any of the roles above.

The most bankable actress with martial arts cred in the early 1990s was Michelle Yeoh, who’d made her triumphant comeback to the big screen in Police Story 3: Supercop, and was soon appearing in all sorts movies: kung fu films, wuxia pian, superhero fantasies, and more. To my knowledge, she was the only woman who headlined a 1990s kung fu film, which was about one of the most famous female martial artists of all time: Yim Wing Chun.

Our film opens with the righteous (if cheap and a smidge lecherous) Scholar Wong (Waise Lee, of Zen of Sword and A Better Tomorrow) visiting some village in Southern China, telling his assistant about how he needs to do something about the local bandit army who’s terrorizing the region. They stop at some establishment where Wing Chun (Yeoh) and her sharp-tongued aunt, Abacus Fong (Yuen King-Tan, of Fight Back to School and Future Cops), are hanging out. The bandits show up and Wing Chun drives them way, manipulating Scholar Wong’s body so as to make it look like he beat them (stealing a gag from Yuen’s own Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow).

A few days later, the bandits show up at a local festival, trying to kidnap a young woman, Charmy (Catherine Hung of Death Melody and Black Wind Inn). The unfortunate young lady has arrived in town with her sick husband looking for a cure for the latter’s illness, and now has a bunch of bandits trying to rape her! Wing Chun once again drives off the bandits, much to the chagrin of the local martial arts masters. In order to win back face, those masters show up at the Yim Family Tofu Shop the next day and challenge Wing Chun to a duel. This is Michelle Yeoh we’re talking about here, so obviously she kicks their representative’s ass and sends the whole lot packing.

It's at that time that Charmy’s husband has passed on and the ill-fated widow is now selling herself to pay for his burial. Abacus Fong and Wing Chun take Charmy under their wing while convincing Scholar Wong to pay for the burial. The newly-single Charmy becomes the store’s “Tofu Beauty,” and soon every man in the town is interested in tofu (apparently a euphemism in Chinese for “vagina”) and soy milk (a euphemism for “semen,” as I understand it). That would include Scholar Wong, who has given up his machinations to marry the tomboyish Wing Chun in favor of the more conventionally beautiful Charmy. At the same time, Wing Chun’s long-forgotten fiancé, Leung Pok-To (Donnie Yen), has also shown up in town looking to reconnoiter with his long-lost love. However, since mistaken identity subplots are as common in Hong Kong films as credited action directors are, Leung mistakes Charmy for Wing Chun and Wing Chun (who wears men’s clothes) for her lover. Shenanigans ensue! Plus, Wing Chun keeps fighting those pesky bandits.

While Yuen Woo-Ping worked on some generally serious kung fu movies in the 1990s, like The Tai Chi Master and Fiery Dragon Kid, this one is closer in tone to Last Hero in China (which he choreographed). While LHIC tended to mix parody and farce with the occasional moment of graphic violence, Wing Chun is mainly a situational romantic comedy, punctuated with frequent displays of martial mastery and effects-driven creativity. I think there are only two deaths in this film: the offscreen death of Charmy’s husband and one bandit whom their leader, Flying Chimpanzee (Norman Tsui Siu-Keung, of Bastard Swordsman and Tiger on the Beat), punches out of anger. The fight scenes, while often intense, are not very violent, keeping within the lightweight tone of the movie. Drama is limited to the occasional moment of self-introspection, which keeps the film from becoming outright sappy on the whole.

Much of the film revolves around the machinations of the male characters—Leung Pok-To, Scholar Wong, and a bandit called Flying Monkey (Chui A-Fai, of A Warrior’s Tragedy)—to get into Charmy’s knickers. In Leung’s case, it’s because he’s too dense to realize that Michelle Yeoh in men’s clothing is still smokin’ hawt Michelle Yeoh. At the same time, Abacus Fong is doing some maneuvering of her own, as she’s out for love and companionship, too. Actress Kingdom Yuen overacts a storm in this role, making for a memorable performance as a greedy woman who has no inhibitions in saying what’s on her mind, even if it offends everyone around her. She makes a great foil to Michelle’s more reserved and bemused Wing Chun and some of the funnier moments are just watching those two interact with each other.

Speaking of bemused, that is the best way to describe Michelle Yeoh’s super-confident approach to her fight scenes for most of the first half. Except for when she’s fighting Flying Chimpanzee, she tends to fight off her attackers with a perpetual amused look on her face while hardly breaking a sweat. It’s a testament to Michelle’s toughness that she’s able to pull off such physicality while not losing her cool. And she does it all here: flashy kicks, complicated handwork, weapons (saber, pole, butterfly swords), prop-fu, and more. I think this is a favorite Michelle film for a lot of fans and it’s not very hard to see why.

Yuen Woo-Ping’s action is heavily wired up (as was the style of the time), but still staged in a way that makes the most of the performers’ physical abilities, including Norman Tsui’s stunt double. He also makes sure that each fight is not a repeat of the one before. But you have one fight where Wing Chun uses Scholar Wong as a prop. Then a more conventional hand-to-hand/sword fight. Then a crazy sequence in which she challenges an opponent to smash a plate of tofu and then does all sorts of moves and furniture kicking to prevent that from happening—sort of an homage to the calligraphy fight from The Magnificent Butcher. Later on, she has a weapons fight with Flying Monkey while both are on horseback. In the last act, there’s another complex sequence in which she and Flying Chimpanzee fight while balancing on a large metal spear. It’s a testament to the Yuen family inventiveness that each fight has a distinct personality while never falling out of step with the tone of the film as a whole.

What you shouldn’t expect in this movie is a faithful retelling of the Wing Chun legend or an Ip Man-level workshop on the awesomeness of wing chun as a fighting style. I’m sure that that last part was much of the reason that Donnie Yen and Yuen Woo-Ping had a falling out during filming. Interestingly enough, when those two finally made a movie together years later, it was Ip Man 3, a movie about wing chun! The film only pays lip service to the events that led to Yim Wing Chun’s training and is set years afterward, so it’s totally an original story. And to see Yuen Woo-Ping’s expert action direction in a period piece bereft of evil Qing officials and equally-evil foreigners who are out to exploit China make the film even more refreshing.

This review is part of Fighting Female February 2023: The Month of Michelle. Click on the banner below for more reviews of her films.