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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Will American moviegoers fall for the the slyly seductive Hong Kong star of "Infernal Affairs"?
Sep 23, 2004 | What would happen if one of the biggest stars in Hollywood persisted in playing gigolos, male strippers, smooth con men, double agents? Imagine the effect it would have on movies if one of its major players chose to be softly insinuating, yet entirely seductive -- a teasing, duplicitous love object whose eyes cunningly work the screen, but who somehow retains the persona of a dynamic action hero.
It's not likely that an actor like Tom Cruise would consistently cast himself as the homme fatale. But Andy Lau, 42, whose 2002 film "Infernal Affairs" finally will be released Friday in the U.S., has done just that. And he is perhaps Hong Kong's most bankable, respected star who hasn't yet crossed over into American films. Lau, who is also one of Asia's most popular singers, is an actor with the dexterity of Kevin Spacey, but with the command for a romantic role; he specializes in intriguing women and tough-talking other men, yet he undermines both action and romance pictures with his deliberate, delicate playing.
His is arguably the test case of how far an audience's desires can be stretched. Can passion be sustained for an object that is so obviously cool-headed? Can virility survive a guy flinging his panties into the eyes of a young woman? (Lau does just this in the opening sequence of the 2003 spiritual sex comedy "Running on Karma," in which he plays a stripper who gets into trouble with the police.)
Judging from the adoration and squeals that Lau inspires not only in Hong Kong but in most of southeast Asia and mainland China, the answer is yes. There's something satisfyingly erotic about his remoteness; his moves are stylized without being formidable. When most actors make a decisive hand gesture, or give a particularly "fine" line reading, it's about exposing the excellence of their technique. Lau also loves technical control, but he incorporates that element into his characters; the men he plays seem genuinely torn between narcissism and spontaneous emotion.
But there's something else about Lau's presence that stirs -- something as elusive as the eroticism of a man's panties. He has a way of bringing the absurd into the domain of sexual relations while keeping an absolutely straight face.
Throughout the nightclub sequences in "Running on Karma," Lau wears a fake musculature -- a patently plastic armor that would seem ridiculous if he didn't take the business of stripping and seducing so seriously. He plays his scenes with the vigor of an action hero, engaging in lusty moves and direct eye contact that naturally enthrall the audience. His character is shown to wield power over two kinds of people -- the stodgy male police force, and the women who are stimulated by him, including a tense rookie cop (Cecilia Cheung). During his interrogation, Lau tries to manipulate the police by taking on some of their swagger, unsettling the other men with his combination of feyness and virility. It's almost as if he's appropriating the moves of a femme fatale, copying Sharon Stone's technique of using coolness to faze machismo.
It's a sign of Lau's unique take on masculinity -- as distinguished from other action stars such as Jet Li and Chow Yun Fat -- that he performs the film's token "martial arts" scene without any prop except a two-ply tissue. Yet Lau proves that he can be as vivid and dynamic with a Kleenex as Chow Yun Fat with his two-fisted gun -- it's an astonishingly light, beautiful sequence in which he controls the glide of a tissue as it floats a centimeter above his extended thigh and rapidly moving limbs. Toward the end of the performance, Lau gives an extra series of sharp punches, and we can hear the sounds of his exertion as the tissue whirs like a white sail in front of him. It's a parody of the strenuousness involved in martial arts films, as well as a nod to the kind of intense male style embodied by Gene Kelly -- Lau performs his "dance" on a deserted side street to impress the nervous rookie cop.
"Dance of a Dream" (2001) also plays on the theme of female awkwardness in the face of astonishing male grace. It's a funny, mean reversal of the Howard Hawks formula; in this film, the abstract ideal of dance can be achieved only by Lau, while the bodies of his female co-stars seem helplessly fleshy and klutzy. Lau's presence seems to invite such narratives (he and the director developed the film as a showcase for his tango skills); here, he plays an opportunistic dance teacher who counsels "expression in every step" and relishes the minimalism of his movements in comparison with the awkwardness of his students.
Lau uses the role as an excuse to make every gesture count -- his character savors the precision of his own speech, speaking in condensed sentences and drawing attention to the calm projection of his voice. His movements emphasize the flexibility in his face and body: He pulls his mouth quickly to one side to indicate boredom, adds a sinuous twist to a casual walk across the floor, or shoots out an arm to pull a body towards him. When dancing, he appears completely concentrated on the woman in front of him -- until the moment he turns outwards and we see that his focus has been on his own presentation all along.
Lau plays every scene in this context: the man who thinks obsessively about how things look. While he has two romantic interests in the film -- an uptight, Joan Crawford-style CEO (Anita Mui) and a dance-obsessed young woman (Sandra Ng) -- he doesn't display more than an amused or pragmatic interest in either of them. He plays emotional scenes convincingly but in quotes, as if "doing" sincerity, "feeling out" emotion. But for the most part his theatricality isn't cold but playful -- when he admits to having feelings for Ng, he acts like a strong man exaggerating the pain of a blow from a woman.
