Wen 丨 Kaiyin
In the Hong Kong film and television industry in the 70s and 90s, there were many popular female stars who were originally born as beauty pageants, and then entered the entertainment industry by directors and producers.
Compared with those actors who graduated from the artist training class, most of the Hong Kong sisters and Asian sisters have not been trained in the acting class, and only win a place on the screen with their good looks, and the subsequent development is also very dependent on the help of personal talent and luck.
Maggie Cheung should be the best of all the Hong Kong stars from the beauty pageant, but it was only after five or six years of hard work in the 1980s and countless vase roles that she proved to the audience in 1989's "Carmen of Mong Kok" that she had the ability to play serious roles.
Zhong Chuhong, who became more famous in the 1980s, although her popularity was explosive, in fact, nearly eight years after her debut, she fully demonstrated her independent character-making skills in Zhang Wanting's "Autumn Fairy Tale".
Some other beauty pageants such as Li Jiaxin, Chen Farong, Cai Shaofen, Guo Aiming, Yang Gongru and others have never been able to get rid of the fate of being a male screen foil throughout their acting careers.
Autumn Fairy Tales
In comparison, Yuan Yongyi can be said to be very lucky. She won the Hong Kong Sister Championship in 1990, and after acting in several TV series, she got the opportunity to play an important supporting actress in "Ah Fei and Aki", and won the crown of the Best Supporting Actress at the Hong Kong Academy Awards that year, almost as soon as she debuted, she got the approval of professionals, which is almost unique among all hong Kong stars who are born as beauty pageants.
"Ah Fei and Aki"
In the four years from 1993 to 1996, her films were piled up, including a record thirteen films in 1994. Legend has it that she once scolded director Wang Jing on the set because she rushed to the set several times a day and fell asleep tired while waiting for the scene, and after being woken up by the latter, she couldn't help but burst out.
Strong personality and bad temper were once her label, and as a result, news of being banned was reported several times. But at the same time, she is also recognized as a young actress with strong acting ability in the mid-1990s, not only can play a wide range of roles, but also enter the role super fast and basically do not need too much guidance and tuning from the director. For an actor who has not received sufficient professional training, it can only be due to acting talent.
《Domestic Lingling Paint》
In her first year on the screen, she played the innocent lesbian in "Ah Fei and Aki", the taciturn and unkind lover in "Three Heroes of the Wind and Dust", the gentle and lovely neighborhood sister in "New Difficult Brothers", and the straightforward cousin in "Lover's Confidant".
The types of these characters are not the same, but at the same time they are unified by Yuan Yongyi's own personality characteristics. From the beginning, she had the consciousness of combining methodological techniques and naturalistic performance, which was different from Maggie Cheung, who was skilled in performing methods, and Zhong Chuhong, who had strong personality characteristics.
"New Difficult Brothers"
The role that best reflects this feature is the cancer girl Amin in "New Can't Love", which is also the first time that Yuan Yongyi has played the female number one on the big screen.
In the first half of the film, the musician Ajie played by Liu Qingyun is living a difficult life because of his adherence to ideals, but Amin, a lively and innocent drama girl, appears next to him and ignites the flame of hope. Amin's eccentric and uninhibited character image and Yuan Yongyi's personality image at that time have been recently posted, and she almost plays effortlessly in her true colors.
"New Can't Love"
But in the second half of the film, Amin is terminally ill and his mood sinks into a frenzied rage and despair. When the doctor informed her of the recurrence of the disease, her movement of tying her shoelaces gradually slowed down, as if she realized that fate was coming, and suddenly reached out her hand angrily to accuse the doctor, loudly let Ajay who came to comfort her shut her mouth, she couldn't help crying, fell into Ajay's arms, but then restrained her emotions and calmed down and gritted her teeth and said that she was fine.
This series of actions, expressions and lines is layered, and the emotional transition is smooth and meticulous and very infectious. In this instant, she skillfully transforms from a naturalistic performance to a methodological technique. For a newcomer who doesn't have much acting experience, this is an amazing professional performance.
Her energetic and sincere performance and good technical control impressed the voters of the Hong Kong Film Awards that year, and awarded her the best actress, helping her to jump into the ranks of first-line actresses.
1994 can be said to be the year in which Yuan Yongyi shined. All of her best roles appeared on the silver screen this year. The first to bear the brunt was the "Golden Branches and Jade Leaves" in Hong Kong films that year.
Previously, Yuan Yongyi often showed her short hair with the breath of a boy's head in the film and life, and in "Golden Branches and Jade Leaves", Chen Kexin put her into the role of a woman dressed as a man and entered the entertainment industry novice, and under the disguise of gender perversion, she and the music producer Gu Jiaming had a relationship.
《Golden Branches and Jade Leaves》
Lin Ziying in the film is almost tailor-made for Yuan Yongyi, and at that time, Hong Kong could not find a second actress who could take on this heavy responsibility: she had both the liveliness and jerkiness of a girl, and from time to time showed a big grin and regardless of the boyhood, so she attracted the roses played by Gu Jiaming and Liu Jialing played by Zhang Guorong.
In the bizarre intersex/gay switch, her neutral temperament is just right to get stuck between the two genders, transcending the difference between men and women to become the core element of personal charm bloom.
The special theme of "Golden Branches and Jade Leaves" has created the topicality of the film, and Yuan Yongyi's performance has laid the most important foundation for the smooth expression of the film's internal logic. Such a role was so rare in previous Hong Kong urban fashion films that the Academy Awards awarded her the crown for best actress again after "New Love" last year.
At this moment, Yuan Yongyi, who won the film, can be said to have reached the peak of her actress's career - the achievement of winning the Academy Awards, she is the first person, and only Maggie Cheung has copied it once since.
In the films released in 1994, the roles played by Yuan Yongyi are almost all distinctive and diverse, including the brave female forensic doctor who fights with the perverted murderer to the end in "The Silent Girl", and the unmarried mother who seems to be overwhelmed in "Sisterly Love", she plays a female agent in Stephen Chow's "Domestic Lingling Paint", the comedy expression has been fully tested, and in "The Killer's Fairy Tale" and Andy Lau partnered to play a well-trained female killer.
But to be mentioned, her best performance of the year appeared in a neglected romantic comedy film, "Every Year Has Today".
"Every Year Has Today"
Gao Zhisen's work has the ambition to use personal emotional stories to see through the changes in Hong Kong's 40-year history.
In the film, a married man and a woman spend a night together in a homestay on an outlying island because of chance, and then the two meet for one day every year. The film takes every ten years as a node to describe the moment when the two people meet in the same room, the age, clothing, personality, career and family relationship of the characters change little by little with the changes of the times, while Yuan Yongyi challenges a character shaping spanning fifty years, and very delicately sets up subtle changes in the character's external behavior and mentality.
The first thing that appeared on the screen was a young woman who was newly married but had some doubts about marriage and longed for love to come; and ten years later, everyone saw a housewife with mature charm and worried about the problem of succession, and the next time when she stood up in the room with a big belly and waited for childbirth, we saw a mother who was mixed with joy and anxiety; on the eve of the Hong Kong financial crisis, everyone became a crazy shareholder, and Yuan Yongyi ostensibly became a sophisticated speculator but in fact covered up the middle-aged emotional crisis between her and her husband When the lover played by her and Leung Ka Fai met for the last time in the twilight year, the emotions that rushed in her heart and the memories of many years surged into her heart, so that the secret and precious emotions between the two were instantly sublimated.
It is hard to imagine that Yuan Yongyi, who was only 24 years old at the time, managed these five age groups so easily, maintaining the coherence of the character's inner personality and distinguishing the character's mentality evolution in different eras with her iconic body language, which once again highlighted her biggest performance characteristics: excellent performance layering and natural imagination to shape the character.
If you look back at Yuan Yongyi's screen performance at this moment in 1994, you will find that she has cooperated with the most popular male stars in Hong Kong at that time, Leung Chao-wai, Leung Ka Fai, Liu Qingyun, Andy Lau, Stephen Chow and Cheung Kwok Wing in the past two years. And she is a rare female Hong Kong star, with a surging aura and not overwhelmed by the opponent actors in the performance. It has not become a decorative "vase" and complements each other perfectly.
Even if she appears with an actor with a very "only slight" role like Zhou Xingchi, her personal image and emotional characteristics are still prominent, which also proves her performance strength from the side.
In 1995 and 1996, Yuen Wing Yee was still red in the Hong Kong film industry.
While taking over a large number of commercial films, she is also trying to make time to play some relatively serious roles, such as playing a girl with a disability in both legs in "I want to live", continuing to play the charm of "gender perversion" in "Golden Branches and Jade Leaves 2", and playing the role of Dan who returned from overseas in "Hudumen", which won her a film award for best supporting actress.
"I want to live" "I want to live"
But overall, she began to gradually transform into a tool-type actor: she could be very good at meeting the requirements of each role, but at the same time she could not further expand the creative expression of the role.
On the one hand, her neutral screen image in films such as "Golden Branches and Jade Leaves" has limited the audience's identification with her feminine side in eastern society; on the other hand, she herself lacks initiative and wise judgment to challenge more different types of roles (which can be contrasted with Maggie Cheung in the same period); finally, her personality is informal, which makes her a lot of enemies in the entertainment industry, and it is constantly rumored that being banned by big guys is also a potential reason why she cannot go to the next level.
"Golden Jade Man Hall"
In the last few years of the nineties, her film contracts were drastically reduced, and the only thing worth noting was playing the mother in "I Love You" who was gradually out of control due to divorce and loss of custody of her daughter. This should also be her last heavyweight main role on the screen.
The whole film is completely based on the portrayal of the inner spiritual world of the divorced mother as the axis, relying on Yuan Yongyi's emotional transformation interpretation of the character's step-by-step despair: she is a housewife who enjoys the happy marriage and family life, experiences divorce setbacks, strives to restore self-confidence in life, but is frustrated again because of the loss of daughter custody, and finally cannot restrain the outbreak of anger and goes to self-destruction.
The character's mental journey is somewhat similar to the pressure that Yuen Wing Yee suffered in the Hong Kong entertainment industry at that time. As a result, she also performs with great seriousness and full of emotions, showing the emotional line of the characters' despair and hope. The role once again earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
"I Love You"
After 1998, Yuan Yongyi faded out of the show business circle for several years. When she reappeared on the screen, she was no longer the image of the lively, rebellious and emotionally rich girl, but crossed a whole age group and began to interpret different types of wife images in films such as "Oh Should Borrow Crooked", "I Love Heaven and Earth", "Disciple", "72 Tenants", "Ip Man: The Ultimate Battle" and so on, and even won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress again for her performance in "The Disciple".
The Disciple
Of course, the best character in this genre is the housewife in Home and Everything that racks her brains to get the neighbors on the opposite floor to tear down the billboard. At this time, Yuan Yongyi has been worlds apart from the cute and stubborn girl in "New Can't Love", and has become a middle-aged woman who has experienced vicissitudes but is full of joy.
Interestingly, at this time, she has some mature female flavors that were once scarce, especially in the film and Huang Qiusheng's old sweetheart suddenly meet a scene, shy and twisted with excitement, and the sense of comedy overflows the screen.
Although her acting skills rarely fall below the passing line, and she has the halo of the Academy Awards, Yuan Yongyi has not been able to become another big-screen superstar that people expect (this standard is indeed more difficult for Hong Kong actresses).
As a result, her real golden years on screen were limited to the four years from 1993 to 1996, which was also the last four years of the golden years of Hong Kong cinema.
With the downward trend of the times, it is increasingly difficult for women to gain a foothold in the Hong Kong entertainment industry. Female celebrities especially need a unique vision, pioneering spirit and temperament that is in line with the new era to expand new career paths, such as Maggie Cheung and Shu Qi, who we know well: one constantly changes their own play path and integrates their performance skills with international standards, and the other exerts their sexy charm to enter the mainland market. And these characteristics Yuan Yongyi do not have.
In the late 1990s, it wasn't enough to just act seriously as a profession, but that was the vision of many Hong Kong actors of that era.
From this point of view, Yuen Wing Yee can be regarded as one of the representatives of actresses in the heyday of Hong Kong cinema: talented, spirited, healthy image, grounded and local, the only thing lacking is the vision of the times and the sense of progress.
If Hong Kong cinema had flourished in the 1970s and 1980s, she would have been more successful than she is now, but in a film industry that was already on the verge of a strong end, her professional quality, no matter how good, could only involuntarily decline with the times.
At that time, many female stars who had been on the screen for a while, such as Bo Annie, Zhang Min, and even the epoch-making Chinese superstar Lin Qingxia, felt the chill of the film industry in the mid-1990s and chose to quit.
So Yuan Yongyi is sorry, but it is also lucky, after all, over the years we can continue to see her image on the screen (or in various mainland variety shows with the theme of love and friendship), and feel the last trace of nostalgia of the golden age of Hong Kong cinema that floats on her.