Xu Anhua seemed to have some kind of obsession with Zhang Ailing.
Before there was "Love in the City" and "Half Life", and now there is "The First Burning Incense", because of this movie, the 74-year-old director was satirized to the point of no end.
No one knew what Xu Anhua was thinking at this moment.
Perhaps, investing in the film itself is a gamble.
Her films are warm and focused on the fate of ordinary people. The people in her films always carry the alienation and frustration of foreigners who are constantly wandering.
But who knows, in her heart, there are also sour stories hidden. Born in Anshan, Liaoning Province, Hui anhua lived in Macau as a child, then studied in the United Kingdom and returned to Hong Kong to shoot films.
For her, nowhere is home.
The three words "foreigner" accompanied Xu Anhua for the first half of his life, alone and walking thousands of miles. Bumping between doors, tossing and turning between cities, without having to ask her what she was for.
She spent half her life trying to be a bystander, but she was an insider.
People who have migrated many times are in captivity wherever they are, and they have never had a home in their lives.
It's just that there are some things that will never be lost.
Hui Anhua, who has never been married in her life, rents a small apartment in North Point, Hong Kong, with her mother, who is in her 90s, and in her words, "two old women support each other." Don't buy a house, don't buy a car, squeeze the subway generously, she is sloppy but decent.
She said she married the movie and didn't regret it.
Xu Anhua is qualified to understate.
Hui Anhua is like a freak in the lively Hong Kong film circle.
She has a mushroom head with ears all year round, and her feet are in plain cloth shoes, and she always smokes from her hands.
The figure is slightly fat, the face is no longer young, nor is it powdered, and the frown that is often locked shows the clear boundaries of the owner's heart.
Her loneliness is like her film lens, always full of a longing for her hometown, but also filled with the despair of never finding a home.
In 2017, even in anti-war movies such as "When is the Bright Moon", Xu Anhua never staged exciting bloody battle scenes, more than the role of the mother and daughter duo played by Ye Dexian and Zhou Xun.
In the dim light, the two ate dinner at opposite tables, a small bowl of southern rice with half a pumpkin, chatting about the changes in the chaotic world outside world, and also talking about the parents.
Stills from the 2017 movie "When is the Bright Moon" Fang Mu (played by Ye Dexian) and Fang Lan (played by Zhou Xun).
Such a grand narrative of war dissolves in the bland pyrotechnic atmosphere.
Daughter Fang Lan has the idealism of the War of Resistance, doing underground intelligence, Fang Mother finally embarked on this road, not to achieve a great life, but to feel sorry for her daughter too hard, and finally died under the guns of the Japanese.
Many years later, in the once war-torn Xiangjiang River, the barren land has been lined with high-rise buildings, and the place of exile is already a fireworks world.
Stills from the movie "When is the Bright Moon"
It was as if nothing had happened, and only a taxi driver named Binzai remembered the past.
He was once a student of Fang Lan, and later joined the guerrillas, and after the victory of the War of Resistance, he drove a taxi to make a living, and ordinary people under the change of the times have lived a new life.
A group of cross-century old people, or quietly squeezed into the bus, or waddled through the streets, and finally merged into the bustling crowd, no one knows who they once were.
Xu Anhua said that they are ordinary people in daily life.
She also appeared on camera herself, and in the ice room, Xu Anhua turned her back to the camera and interviewed Leung Ka-fai.
The back of the white dress on the far left is Xu Anhua
At the end of the film, Leung Ka-fai, who finished telling the past, got up trembling, hurried back to the taxi, hung up the sign suspended service, drove into the traffic of Hong Kong, and finally disappeared into the neon depths.
Screenshot of the movie "When is the Bright Moon"
Xu Anhua, who remained where he was, also walked into the crowd in the evening.
In the vicissitudes of middle-aged people, there is always a kind of wordless pain, Xu Anhua's films always exude a sense of alien wandering, but she herself rarely exposes her inner loneliness to the outside world.
In Xu Anhua's film jianghu, there is no flesh and blood blurred hatred, only gentle compassion.
As we all know, Zhang Ailing's literary works are difficult to be filmed, Xu Anhua is partial to not believing in evil, and she chooses to face the difficulties.
Before there was "Love in the City", "Half Life", and now there is "The First Incense".
On October 22, the film "The First Burning Incense", directed by Xu Anhua, was released as scheduled, telling the love story of female student Ge Weilong being used by her aunt Mrs. Liang to talk to playboy Ge Qiqiqiao about desire and entanglement.
All the money is staggered, but it is a carnival before the end of the world.
The screenwriter of this film, Wang Anyi, the cinematographer Du Kefeng, and the music Sakamoto Ryuichi, have a strong behind-the-scenes team, and the actors are starring Ma Sichun, Peng Yuyan, Yu Feihong, Fan Wei and others.
Xu Anhua turned Zhang Ailing's book into a shadow person, and suffered an unprecedented storm.
Stills from the movie "The First Incense"
The biggest is the controversy over the casting, Ma Sichun and Peng Yuyan are considered by the audience to be contrary to the original work, performing a "pure love story" of youthful pain texture.
As the director who knows Zhang Ailing best, Xu Anhua, the film is about women's narratives of love dilemmas, Xu Anhua is good at using close-ups to show loss and emptiness.
When she looked at Zhang Ailing, what she saw was not the coldness and sharpness of human nature, but the wandering and identity of people.
Xu Anhua's childhood was unhappy, and she has always been grumpy about it.
Later, she confessed that she was unhappy at that time, perhaps because of an unhappy mother.
"She always misses Japan, always saying that she wants to eat Japanese food and watch Japanese movies. However, later, she actually went to Japan once, found that everything was different, and never mentioned it when she came back. ”
Childhood and mother influenced Xu Anhua's later creations, and in her later films, the mother-daughter relationship has always been the theme of her quest.
Xu Anhua and his mother when he was a child
Her father was a Kuomintang clerk, and this identity doomed the family's uncertain fate.
Xu Anhua still does not know where is his hometown.
Born in Anshan, Liaoning Province, she moved to Macau with her parents at the age of two months, and finally settled in Hong Kong. Xu Anhua grew up in an old-fashioned family, and because both her grandfather and father loved classical literature, she grew up reading a lot of books.
It wasn't until she was 15 years old that Xu Anhua learned that her mother was Japanese, "Everyone said she was from Northeast China, and I always thought she didn't speak Cantonese and hadn't read books, so she didn't know Chinese very well." ”
When he was young, Xu Anhua had a beautiful eyebrow, a pair of eyes full of aura, and a strong book.
Young Xu Anhua (front) with family
In 1972, she received her Master of Arts degree from the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong, and then set foot in another foreign country to study film at the London Film School in the United Kingdom.
In fact, in the expectation of her parents, Xu Anhua should become a doctor, but she is immersed in the world of light and shadow of movies.
Xu Anhua in his youth
To this day, when it comes to studying film in the UK, Xu Anhua will still be nostalgic, which was the era of her white clothes fluttering.
She has a young, new face, but the whole person has the calmness of the mountain rain and the wind.
Later, whenever he recalled that time, Xu Anhua said with certainty that it was the real golden age of his life.
In 1975, Hui Anhua, who returned to Hong Kong after completing his studies, first entered the film industry as an assistant to a generation of film guru Hu Jinquan, and his starting point was very high.
"Other women may be more interested in falling in love, but I think it's awesome to be a director."
In 1979, Xu Anhua tried his hand at the cattle knife and directed his film debut "Crazy Robbery".
The thriller drama film starring Zhao Yazhi, Wan Ziliang and Cheung Ai Jia was a huge success and won several awards, and the film is regarded as a masterpiece of Hong Kong New Wave cinema.
Stills from the 1979 film Mad Robbery
A passage from a letter that Hu Jinquan once wrote to Xu Anhua had a profound impact on her:
"If one day, in foreign film festivals, we don't need to use Chinese silk, porcelain, or antiques to attract foreigners, but to make some very good standards, then Chinese films will be successful." 」
This letter, Xu Anhua has preserved for more than twenty years, and all the films she has made since then have focused on the most ordinary people in China, with no grand scenes, only warm little people.
Hui Anhua's circle of friends hides the golden age of Hong Kong's film and television industry.
From left to right: Xu Anhua, Lin Qingxia, Xu Feng
Among them, Andy Lau is the most important, he once said that Xu Anhua is his biggest benefactor.
This fate stems from the 1982 movie "Run to the Fury Sea", when Andy Lau was still a newcomer, facing the dilemma of no drama to shoot, which was an olive branch extended to him by Xu Anhua.
This literary film, about the Chinese exclusion incident in Vietnam in the 1970s, is a compassionate record of the catastrophe of human nature through the lens of a foreign journalist.
The script has 70,000 words, but it is a person who has not experienced political turmoil, written in a study, listening to the "Requiem" hundreds of times, Hong Kong people are shocked to realize their future fate, or will be like Vietnamese refugees to the sea of anger.
In the film, there is distant freedom, and there is also benevolence on the road to humanity.
Stills of Zu Ming (played by Andy Lau) in the 1982 movie "Run to the Fury Sea"
The film became a classic masterpiece of the Hong Kong New Wave and earned more than HK$15 million at the box office, setting a new record for the box office of local literary and art films.
The film was invested and filmed by the well-known film star Xia Meng, and the title of the movie "Run to the Fury Sea" was conceived by Jin Yong, an admirer of Xia Meng.
With this film, Andy Lau was nominated for best newcomer at the Academy Awards that year, and his acting career skyrocketed.
This is Andy Lau's film debut, the peak of his debut.
He will silently remember the kindness of director Xu Anhua's Bole in his heart.
Andy Lau and Xu Anhua
Director Chen Jiashang once said: "The reason why Hong Kong films can hold up is because we still have Wong Kar Wai and Hui Anhua, not because there is me and Wang Jing." ”
This sentence is enough to show that Xu Anhua's skill is not ordinary.
It is lamentable that after "Running to the Fury Sea", Xu Anhua fell into a decade-long low tide.
When Xu Anhua was in her twenties, she became infatuated with the books of two female writers of the Republic of China, one zhang Ailing and the other Xiao Hong.
Regarding Zhang Ailing, Xu Anhua has already filmed "Half Life" and "Love in the City" before.
In 1984, she filmed "Love in the Fallen City", Zhou Runfa played the male protagonist Nanyang overseas Chinese Fan Liuyuan, and Miao Qianren played the female protagonist Bai Jialiu Miss Bai Tassel.
Xu Anhua bluntly said that it was a story because a city fell, thus completing a pair of "dog men and women".
Stills from the 1984 film "Love in the Fallen City" by Fan Liuyuan (played by Zhou Runfa) and Bai Liusu (played by Miao Qianren).
After the release of the movie, the bad reviews were overwhelming, and Xu Anhua, who was loyal to Zhang Ailing's original work, was annoyed:
"The biggest lesson of 'Love in the City' is that I did not grasp the spirit of the work, and the spirit of that work is actually very Western and ironic, not a big tragedy that lingers. The pace is too slow, this is obviously not a lingering story, somehow it can be very entangled. ”
Xu Anhua has a certain obsession with Zhang Ailing's literary works.
Thirteen years later, she filmed "Half Life" with her own narrative method, with Li Ming and Wu Qianlian playing the male protagonist Shen Shijun and the female protagonist Gu Manzhen respectively.
Stills of Gu Manzhen (played by Wu Qianlian) and Shen Shijun (played by Li Ming) in the 1997 movie "Half Life"
Mei Yanfang plays Gu Manzhen's sister Gu Manlu.
Mei Yanfang and Wu Qianlian Stills
Under The lens of Hui Anhua, this is a scene of Shanghai that is very different from the previous Hong Kong movies, no longer bright and green, no longer prosperous.
She photographed the expressionless faces of the female workers in the factory, the figures of lovers who wanted to say goodbye under the dim street lamps, and the streets and alleys with the hot air of fritters and soy milk, which was a sense of tension that wrapped her personal destiny in the torrent of the times.
Gu Man, played by Wu Qianlian, is cold and kind, and his self-esteem and independence after suffering are respected, and his eyes are all dramas.
Stills of Gu Manzhen (played by Wu Qianlian) in the 1997 movie "Half Life"
The dawn of Wen Tun is very suitable for playing this bookish Shen Shijun, that beautiful sense of vulnerability, which shatters when touched.
Their love is like a small white snowflake in winter, can not withstand the impact of the world, the end can be imagined, the two fell in love together, and finally separated.
Xu Anhua is best at describing detailed scenes, and when Gu Manzhen escaped from the hospital, he taught in the academy. She taught the children to read "Spring Hope" with a book in her hand:
"The country is broken by mountains and rivers, and the city is deep in spring grass and trees.
When I feel the flowers splash tears, I hate the birds and be frightened. ”
Word by word, it presents Gu Manzhen's real heart of misery after suffering great harm, giving the viewer a sense of sadness.
There is a scene in the movie where Shen Shijun looks for Gu Manzhen's red gloves with a flashlight on the dark winter night, and after finding it, he shows a childlike smile.
Liking someone is just like that, and what about liking it again.
The most painful line of this movie is that at the end of the film, Gu Manzhen and Shen Shijun reunite in a familiar place, things are not human, she said:
"Shi Jun, it's good to see each other again, but we can't go back."
Stills of Shen Shijun (played by Li Ming) and Gu Manzhen (played by Wu Qianlian) in the 1997 movie "Half Life"
The fate of two people is very shallow, so shallow that they can only use half of their lives.
It wasn't a tragedy, it was life.
After the film was released, the response was still mediocre, and Xu Anhua fell silent, she thought it felt right.
Stills from the 1997 movie Half-Life
In the subsequent creative career, Xu Anhua always seemed to be frustrated.
In addition to Zhang Ailing's two novel adaptations, there is also her semi-autobiographical film "Ketu Qiu Hate", which tells the story of Xu Anhua's journey from estrangement to understanding with her mother.
However, no matter how much they turn the river and the sea in their own hearts, in the eyes of onlookers, they are all bland.
Unsurprisingly, Xu Anhua's "Ketu Autumn Hate" hit the street at the box office.
Stills from the 1990 movie "Ketu Qiu Hate" Xiao En (played by Maggie Cheung) and Aoi Zi (played by Lu Xiaofen).
Director Wang Jing even sent a mockery: "Who wants to watch the story of a fat woman and her mother." ”
It is not surprising that he can say this, Wang Jing's movies are always alive, and sexy beauties stir the hormones of men.
But in Xu Anhua's films, you can never see sex.
She was very poor, and others advised her to make commercial films to make herself better, and Xu Anhua refused to cater to her.
This dilemma made it more difficult for her to seek funding.
Until 1995, the movie "Woman, Forty" turned out to be the world, sending Xu Anhua to the peak of success again.
Stills from the 1995 movie "Woman, Forty" A'e (played by Xiao Fangfang).
The film focuses on the fate of the little people at the bottom, showing the cold of the world and the cold and warm of human feelings in chai rice oil and salt and family trivia.
In the midst of blandness, with the power of true emotion, this film swept the major film awards of the year, and also sent the lead actor Xiao Fangfang to the throne of the Berlin Film Queen.
There is a dialogue in the movie, and the words that Ah E, played by Xiao Fangfang, resisted are also the thoughts of director Xu Anhua.
"Isn't your greatest happiness being my wife?"
"Going to work is the greatest pleasure of my life, and I warn you so badly that I will never give up!"
Stills from the 1995 film Woman, Forty
Just as Xu Anhua did not expect that "Woman, Forty" would be so popular, she also did not know that her film would be accepted by the market, and she did not care about it.
As a literary and art film director, her film works have a relatively small audience, the box office is often not proportional to word of mouth, and movies that are not popular often occur.
Faced with the dismal woes of the box office, Xu Anhua would initially feel frustrated. Later, she gradually walked away for a long time, and understood that in the end, it would be out of the water, and filming a good scene was the most important.
In 2008, the movie "Day and Night in Tin Shui Wai" was released, telling the life story of an ordinary couple of ordinary women, just like most people of the same era, living ordinary days, reflecting the thorns and warmth in the life of Tin Shui Wai.
Stills from the 2008 film "Day and Night in Tin Shui Wai"
An ordinary housewife, no one will make a movie for her, but Xu Anhua will.
Hui Anhua's concern for certain groups in Hong Kong society has never disappeared, and she wants to express what moves her heart accurately through movies.
The times are getting faster and faster under the blessing of crazy materialism. Xu Anhua chose to swim against the current, and her films became slower and slower.
In the mainstream Hong Kong film circle full of sensory stimulation, Hui Anhua's Wen Tun is not very pleasing, and her restraint and sense of proportion are inclined to the complex temperament of middle-aged people.
Her film works have the same commonality, that is, they pay attention to the fate and trivial life of ordinary people, and the taste of people.
"I've been making movies, not deliberately engaged in any social issues, I'm just more concerned about the fate of the characters."
So in 2012, there was Andy Lau and "Sister Tao".
Xu Anhua and Andy Lau were on the shooting scene of "Sister Tao"
Andy Lau is a grateful person, when Xu Anhua hit a wall everywhere, he was discouraged and did not want to insist on making literary and art movies, Andy Lau said to her: "You were originally a bird, you don't learn to swim, you are not a fish, find yourself." ”
30 years later, Xu Anhua's literary and artistic film "Sister Peach" many people are not optimistic, Andy Lau himself invested 30 million yuan, himself as the male lead, zero film remuneration to star.
In the end, this warm film allowed Andy Lau to win the double golden film emperor, and director Xu Anhua won the Academy Award for Best Director for the fourth time.
Andy Lau said: "The director said a word, I am quite painful. She said, I haven't had enough money to shoot a scene for a long time. ”
This is a very warm movie, Ye Dexian played by Sister Tao from the age of 13 to a family surnamed Li as a maid, serving 5 generations of the Li family, but also raising the second generation of young master Roger.
Stills of the 2012 movie "Sister Tao" Tao Jie (played by Ye Dexian) and Roger (played by Andy Lau).
Sister Tao was unmarried all her life, childless, and gave her best years to the family, and her care and advice to Roger was like facing a child who was about to leave home.
One of the most common things Sister Tao said to Roger was: "You are busy, you don't have to come to see me often." ”
In the last years of Sister Tao, Roger regarded her as a mother, took the old man's hand to the restaurant to eat, ordered a osmanthus fish, and sandwiched a piece of the fattest fish in the middle of the belly into Sister Tao's bowl.
The two looked at each other and smiled, which was tacit understanding and warmth.
In the last stage of Sister Tao's life, Roger has been with her, he calmly explained to the doctor about Sister Tao's aftermath, seemingly sitting alone to eat noodles, but he could not swallow, and he could feel the pain of the cone across the screen.
At The funeral of Sister Tao, everyone sat together and recalled the past of this woman, and the film did not fall into infinite sadness, only a strong warmth.
This is also the core of Xu Anhua's films.
When she was young, she desperately discussed heavy and grand propositions through her own films, and when she was older, she was more willing to pay attention to the life, death, illness and death of ordinary people and their inner state.
"Because I'm also old, 65 years old, single, and a woman who is about to grow old alone, Sister Tao has experienced all the fears in my heart." 」
That year, Xu Anhua swept the Hong Kong and Taiwan Film Awards Ceremony again with the movie "Sister Tao".
At the film awards ceremony, Andy Lau tearfully confessed: "Thank you director Xu Anhua gave me a chance to become an actor and become a superstar 30 years ago." ”
Xu Anhua and Andy Lau look at each other and smile, which is a pity for each other, but also a shared suffering.
Xu Anhua said that after he finished filming "Sister Peach", he was no longer afraid of getting old and sloppy.
She was relieved.
There are two female writers of the Republic of China, attracting Xu Anhua's sensitive nerves.
There is Zhang Ailing in the front and Xiao Hong in the back.
It was a HulanHe writer who had experienced ups and downs, and the talented woman's life seemed to be spent in winter, short to only 31 years.
Fate gave Xiao Hong a talent beyond ordinary people, but she was also very mean, miserly to the point that the warmth given to her was fleeting, and her vulnerability stemmed from not wanting to face the world alone.
Tang Wei played Xiao Hong in the movie "Golden Age"
For Xiao Hong, Xu Anhua has his own thoughts.
"She's from Northeast China, I was born in Northeast China, and she died in Hong Kong, so I feel very close."
From one war to another, from one man to another, from one rupture to another, Xu Anhua said Xiao Hong's story, which she thought about for 40 years.
"From a foreign land to a foreign land, how little is this wish, and the unspeakable pain is the most painful." Xiao Hong said so in the movie.
After filming "The Golden Age", Xu Anhua once again remembered her childhood and the fate of her parents, she said: "In fact, I think there is nothing wrong with wandering or wandering, at least, they have spent a rich life."
She called it a great attempt, and at its core it was still a long literary film.
Unfortunately, Xiao Hong's story is not for everyone to empathize with.
In 2014, after the release of "Golden Age", the box office was dismal, and Xu Anhua teased himself at a symposium:
"I'm really not a big director and want to try to be one of them before I die, but not yet, as for 40 years of shooting, sometimes it's just to make a living, to make money. Because I didn't know how to do anything else and wasn't qualified to be a dancer, I continued to make movies. ”
In her heart, in addition to making a movie for subsistence, but also for self-esteem, Xu Anhua is ashamed to say some words that elevate and exaggerate emotions, and try to express them as plainly as possible, just like her films.
Regarding the era of the Republic of China that went far, Xu Anhua often missed: "That era was very cruel and heavy, and now this era is very relaxed on the surface, but it is still cruel at the bottom." ”
Humanistic feelings have never disappeared in her films.
Tang Wei, Feng Shaofeng and Xu Anhua were filmed on the scene of the movie "Golden Age"
Xu Anhua was very grounded, and she once said to the reporter who wanted to interview her: "I am such an ordinary person, there is nothing to write about." ”
In fact, her own life is a legend in itself.
As a "first sister of Hong Kong movies", she has never been married in her life, and lives with her mother in her 90s in a small apartment in North Point, Hong Kong, expressing in her words as "two old women supporting each other".
Don't buy a house, don't buy a car, squeeze the subway generously, she is sloppy but decent.
Xu Anhua herself has never considered herself an artist, and she seems to be used to putting herself in an embarrassing and contradictory situation.
The 74-year-old Xu Anhua married herself to the movie, and her questions about life's confusion are hidden in it.
Xu Anhua's films are very warm, have touched the hearts of countless people, and the people in her films have always carried the alienation and coldness of foreigners who are constantly drifting.
Xu Anhua was filmed on location in the movie "Golden Age"
But who knows, in her heart, there are also sour stories hidden. Born in Anshan, Liaoning Province, she lived in Macau as a child, then studied in the Uk and returned to Hong Kong to film.
Xu Anhua conforms to our beautiful imagination of artists, does not make movies for materialism and fame, is talented, but always maintains self-doubt, and finally can only admit his fate.
"As a filmmaker, of course I wish I was better than I am now, and when I die, I am better than I am now."
Xu Anhua and Zhou Xun were filmed on the scene of the movie "When is the Bright Moon"
Hui Anhua's films have witnessed the vicissitudes of Hong Kong films almost the whole process.
She's been making movies for 42 years, from 32 to 74, the best times for a woman, all given to movies. Her films are her life. Her highlights and roughness, her integrity and flaws, are all in it.
Some of the partners who made the film with Xu Anhua have passed away, and some have retired.
She often misses the old friends who loved movies together, which is the warm and spiritual character of this "Hong Kong director's sister".
She tried to cover up her true heart with a laugh that seemed heartless and lungless, which was after all a place that Xu Anhua did not want to show easily.
Xu Anhua said that he was a failure as a person.
Because her life is blank except for movies and reading books, she is not married and has no children, "many people have experience, I don't have, a bit of a loss."
She spoke lightly about her shortcomings, but firmly said that she married the movie and did not regret it.
Many people are particularly impressed by her walking, and Andy Lau is the most moving:
"Filming on the mountain, she always walks ahead, no matter how many times she falls in the distance, she still continues to walk." In fact, she walked slowly, but let us catch up, but somehow, always so fast. ”
Xu Anhua walked so fast, perhaps over the years, she had long been accustomed to breaking into the front alone, rather than synchronizing with this circle, she wanted to walk alone in front, and her heart was always vigilant.
Xu Anhua, who is in his seventies, sat alone on the set
In her films, there are all kinds of love, but Xu Anhua herself is always alone, and she completely gives herself to the movie.
Today, Xu Anhua is 74 years old, and at an age when many people have been nurturing for a long time, she is still looking for herself in the world of light and shadow.
Xu Anhua's mother, when she was in her thirties, also inevitably urged marriage, and later, as the days grew, the old man said a meaningful word to his daughter: "I think your life is not suitable for marriage." ”
After she heard it, she didn't ask why, but just thought it was very reasonable.
Looking back on most of his life, Xu Anhua said: "The saddest life is just like this, and the happiest life is just like this." So, I feel like my life is magnificent. ”
After finishing her work, she can't wait to return to her home in North Point, Hong Kong, where she has a mother who has been tied up with her for most of her life. Xu Anhua told Zhang Aijia that she wanted to spend more time drinking, singing and dancing, but this was only a "luxury" after all.
In the early years, she and Shi Nansheng went out to drink, and after a few drinks, they were quite interested, and Xu Anhua recited Shakespeare's theatrical works to his friends.
Since then, Xu Anhua's friends have not wanted her to drink.
Zhang Aijia and Xu Anhua
In 1990, Xu Anhua directed "Ketu Autumn Hate", which told the long story of a pair of exotic mothers and daughters from estrangement and contradiction to mutual forgiveness.
It is worth mentioning that this movie is based on her real life experience, the young Maggie Cheung has the shadow of Xu Anhua when she was young, there is no taste of drama in her eyes, and she has a strong stubbornness in her ignorance.
Stills from the 1990 movie "Ketu Qiu Hate" Xiao En (played by Maggie Cheung).
The background of the story is a huge national pain, and the script falls on the reconciliation of the mother-daughter relationship.
Xiao En, played by Maggie Cheung, has parents who met in the war-torn years, her mother Aoiko is Japanese, her father is a Kuomintang clerk, and she is studying film in the UK, returning to Hong Kong after completing her studies.
The estrangement between mother and daughter can only be alleviated in the nostalgia of finding roots, "the farther away the relatives, the farther the closer they are."
The cool breeze has faith, and the autumn moon is boundless.
This semi-autobiographical film of Xu Anhua, with her origins, was originally a place of travel, and eventually became a place of return.
Xu Anhua recalled his childhood and mother, "I always felt that my mother was a wanderer, left home at a young age, from Japan to China, from Qiqihar to Shenyang, Anshan, to Macao, and finally landed in Hong Kong, and finally found that no place was hometown." ”
The bustle is someone else's, and the precious images in Xu Anhua's memory are just a flashing picture in the eyes of others.
Once nostalgic, it has become autumn hatred, and Hui Anhua still lives with his mother in her nineties in an old apartment in North Point, Hong Kong, and there is a cat in the house.
Xu Anhua and his mother
On King's Road in North Point, Hong Kong, near her residence, there is a Lyceum Photo Studio.
In 1954, Zhang Ailing lived nearby, and it was here that the famous photograph of all beings looking at the world coldly was taken here.
Zhang ailing
Thirty years later, Zhang Ailing moved in Los Angeles to pack her bags, and when she saw this old photo, she couldn't help but ask herself: "I hope that Thirty Autumn will shed tears, and the depression will be different." ”
In a sense, Xu Anhua and Zhang Ailing come from the same and different era of wandering, from a foreign land to another foreign land.
Xu Anhua always took his mother's rough hand and walked in the familiar and unfamiliar streets and alleys when the twilight was dark.
It was getting dark quickly, and the sound of geese flying north came wafting in, sounding like a sob of grievance, telling an inexplicable sore spot.
In the empty street, there was only Xu Anhua and the woman who gave birth to her.