Michelle Yeoh makes history!

On the morning of March 13, Beijing time, the 95th Academy Awards ceremony will be held in Los Angeles, USA. Prior to this, "Instantaneous Universe", which received multiple nominations, was in the spotlight. On the day of the awards ceremony, this film with a unique temperament swept the Oscar scene, winning many awards such as Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Actress. Michelle Yeoh, which Chinese audiences have been waiting for, really beat "The Great Devil" Cate Blanchett to top Best Actress and become the first Asian actress in Oscar history. And this is not Michelle Yeoh's first award with this film, before that, she had already won the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards for her performance in "Instantaneous Universe".

A still from "Instantaneous Universe"

She waited 40 years for this scene of holding the trophy.

For a long time, Michelle Yeoh has given the impression of a female star who has broken into the world film scene with "kung fu", and is accustomed to showing people with a strong face. As director Ang Lee observed her, she is used to hiding vulnerability, showing strength, hiding injuries and tears in her life, and choosing to respond to doubts with non-stop persistence. With this persistence, she firmly seized every opportunity to conquer the audience, and finally waited for a character tailored to herself.

40 years and so on for a suitable role

At the age of 60, in Michelle Yeoh's own opinion, it seems that there are still some regrets in her career. In the eyes of the audience, she is a famous Chinese actress, a beating woman in "Police Story 3", a heroine in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and a strong Asian mother-in-law in "Crazy Rich Asians". But in this year, she met this role that perfectly matched her - the unkempt laundromat lady in "Instantaneous Universe".

Evelyn Wang, the middle-aged laundromat lady in the story, has a great contrast with her life, life is difficult, the whole family points to her hard work, cowardly husband, disabled father and rebellious daughter, endless tax returns, everything can make her fall into mania. But by chance, her husband told her that she could experience life in the multiverse, and that the crises in each universe could only be saved by her. She began to travel through different lives, and in the process, the tension between her and her family slowly melted.

This is not a glamorous, attractive image of a woman, but a script that can make her addicted. Being able to make such a movie is also an accidental arrangement. Film directors Kwan Jiayong and Daniel Schneider originally wanted to invite Jackie Chan to play the male protagonist, but at that time Jackie Chan did not have a schedule, and they began to change their thinking and recreate the script from the perspective of the female protagonist, so that a frustrated middle-aged woman could experience a strange life. They even set the protagonist's name to "Michelle at the beginning", which is the same as Michelle Yeoh's English name.

Michelle Yeoh fell in love with the character, and she found herself "funny, sincere, sad" in it, and could do everything that the previous Facebook character did not have. More importantly, Michelle Yeoh sees not just herself in this role, but the real lives of millions of immigrants from Asia. After the finished product came out, many people were taken aback by the film's mix-and-match style, and even found it difficult to understand, but speaking of all this, Michelle Yeoh couldn't help but cry in the interview, she said that finally someone can know that she can do this.

The film also happens to be at a time that suits it. Asian protagonist, female theme, middle-aged frustration... A dozen or twenty years ago, "Instantaneous Universe" may have been a weird work, but in today's era, this trick to break through the stereotypes of the big screen has succeeded. Michelle Yeoh has become a dazzling star in the international film industry in 2022-2023.

Hit out of life

In the past 40 years, Michelle Yeoh has cooperated with well-known filmmakers such as Jackie Chan and Ang Lee. Many filmmakers who have worked with have worked with Michelle Yeoh's first reaction is the energy to kill and not be afraid of injury. This kind of desperation is Michelle Yeoh's biggest advantage in the film industry in the first half of her life, behind which is her decades of hard work and unspeakable physical torture.

Director Ang Lee has recalled many details when working with Michelle Yeoh, and Michelle Yeoh's first impression of him is also this desperate hard work and fierceness. When filming "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", a week after filming, Michelle Yeoh was injured, she filmed the evening martial arts scene for several days, it was a long time, she had to turn around, kick, fight, as a result, her ligaments were torn off and she had to rest for a month or two. She was not worried about herself, but immediately asked Ang Lee, would she lower her requirements because she was injured? Ang Lee replied, no.

Such scenes have appeared in Michelle Yeoh's life countless times, and each time it seems to be playing with her life. In "New Police Story 3", she stands on a truck doing stunts and wants to jump down to the front of the front cover of the car driven by Jackie Chan, which she imagines is not difficult, but when she actually stands up, everything is shaky. When she jumped, the protection mechanism failed, and she fell to the side, but fortunately Jackie Chan grabbed her clothes. Filming "Akin's Story", she fell from a high platform.

This hardship was her fate in choosing the film industry in Hong Kong in the 80s and 90s of the last century. Michelle Yeoh once lived a wealthy life, began to learn ballet, painting and other talents from a young age, and became Miss Malaysia at the age of 21. After entering the film industry, at the beginning, she played a weak female role like Lin Qingxia and others, and later, after the advice of Sammo Hung's seniors, she began to transform, to learn martial arts, punch sandbags, kick, and train with other martial arts men no different.

Filming a scene, fighting for a lifetime, over time, adventure and courage have become habits. Such efforts were not in vain, in 1997, Michelle Yeoh became the only "Bond girl" in "007: Tomorrow's Empire" with a series of excellent fighting images in Hong Kong films, in which she played a Bond girl who was not just a vase, but an extremely independent female image. Some people commented that her work broke Hollywood stereotypes.

And this time, in her performance in "Instantaneous Universe", she finally surpassed herself in all aspects. This is a dizzying work, with a mix of genres and complex presentations, illusion and reality, withdrawal and investment, irony and warmth, madness and tenderness... All contradictions are gathered in this story, and even more so on the heroine played by Michelle Yeoh, who has to switch, swing, and connect in different states, so that the audience believes in the characters in each "universe". This work, which invested only 25 million US dollars, contributed a very different viewing experience with Michelle Yeoh's acting skills and the director's control. At the same time, Michelle Yeoh herself may have gained the fullest and most complex interpretation experience in decades from the film. A Chinese actress who has struggled for half her life has broken through the ceiling again.

Author: Qiu Guangyu