Middle-aged in Middle Kingdom
By Chen Nan (China Daily)
link:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/showbiz/2009-09/08/
content_8667123.htm
Thirty years ago, Joan Chen was making Chinese moviegoers sigh with
her effortless beauty and innocent smile. Now, midway through middle
age, she is promoting a new TV series in Beijing whose central point
is that she looks like hell.
The TV series, Chen's first Chinese TV role, which opened on Beijing
TV station last weekend and received a 6.37 percent TV watching rate,
means 6.37 million viewers, is a family drama called Newcomers to the
Middle-Aged (Xin Rendao Zhongnian).
Chen plays a doctor Tian Wenjie who is in her early 40s. She has the
dubious pleasure of moving into a new house with her husband after
spending almost their entire savings, while taking care of both her
mother-in-law and her mother. Tian is that woman of a certain age, who
has a good-tempered but plain husband, works hard as a surgeon, is
often at war with her teenage daughter, is ambivalent about her aging
looks, and is caught between family relationships. She is, in fact, a
woman not unlike Chen.
"Certainly it is true that the family relationships and working
pressures portrayed in the TV series are very much like the ones in
real life," says Chen, 48. "I can hear my middle-aged friends complain
about their anxieties. And I am one of them."
Tian fluctuates wildly between harmonizing family relationships,
working hard for a promotion and taking care of her daughter's
education.
So how much of that emotional roller coaster has Chen herself ridden
over the years?
"Absolutely all of it," she says. "I think that is the so-called
middle age crisis."
Unlike her usual screen images, often beautiful, mysterious, and sexy,
Chen presents an ordinary middle-aged woman living in Beijing. Chen
spent months in the capital, getting to know her husband-in-drama,
played by actor Feng Yuanzheng, and tasting the local life.
In the TV series, she dons heavy winter coats and rides her bicycle
across Beijing's hutong alleys. She wears a loose pajama, peeling
apples while complaining about family's trivial matters. And she
bargains loudly at a local fruit market. To break the ice with her
mother-in-law, she wears a greasy apron and cooks a rich dinner, only
to make things worse owing to misunderstandings. Also, she gazes into
the mirror counting how many new wrinkles have appeared and how much
weight she has gained.
"The doctor (of the series) trying to balance her career and her
family, and trying to be both a good mother and a good daughter
definitely defines my situation. My husband, luckily, is supportive
and considerate," she says.
Living in San Francisco with her husband and two daughters, Chen says
that she flies frequently to Shanghai, her hometown, to visit her
mother. "My daughters are going to apply to college and I am faced
with the usual adolescent issues. My parents have various health
problems. And I still want to make movies. Those are my
responsibilities as a mother, daughter, wife and a filmmaker," she
says.
She jokingly described herself as "a warrior" battling middle age. But
the actress-cum-director has, "warrior-like", taken on many a
challenge in her 30 years in the film industry.
In her prime, Chen was as well known in Hollywood as in the Chinese
mainland. Born into a family of doctors in 1961, she made her name at
14 in late director Xie Jin's Youth in 1976 (Qing Chun). Her role in
The Little Flower (Xiao Hua) in 1979 won her a Best Actress Award at
the Full Blossom Awards, the Chinese equivalent of the Oscars, and
made Chen the most famous actress in China prompting Time magazine to
call her the "Elizabeth Taylor of China". At 20, she moved to the
United States and studied filmmaking in California.
"My classmates didn't know I was a famous actress back in China. And
my early days in the US were the same as those faced by other Chinese
students, doing part-time jobs such as washing dishes to make money,"
she recalls.
Her first role in a Hollywood movie was a supporting one that involved
no dialogue. In 1986, she finally got her first leading role in the
Hollywood movie Tai-Pan which then led to Bernardo Bertolucci's Oscar-
winning The Last Emperor in 1987.
Chen plays a spoiled empress, whose love and life are tragically
destroyed. Later, she attracted attention as Josie Packard in David
Lynch's TV series Twin Peaks and in 1993, she played a Vietnamese
mother who suffers the lifelong effects of war in Oliver Stone's
Heaven and Earth.
She says she is grateful for her early days of struggle in the US, for
it helped build her character and resolve. "I always have a sense of
insecurity which drives me to work all the time, looking for the next
role and the next project," she says.
Returning to China in 1993, Chen earned a role in director Stanley
Kwan's Red Rose, White Rose (Hong Meigui Bai Meigui), which was
nominated for Berlin's Golden Bear award. Chen plays a married woman,
craving for love. The role won her Best Actress at the Golden Horse
Award in Taiwan.
She is happily married to Chinese-American cardiologist Peter Hui
after a failed marriage in 1992. Who could ask for more? But Chen says
she thrives on pushing herself.
"I have always believed in working. Taking care of your house and
husband is not enough for a woman. It is not complete," she says. It
seems the stability a family has given her has allowed the actress to
experiment with her career.
When she read the story of a girl who was sent from a big city to the
Tibetan area during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), she felt the
urge to make it into a film, which was her directorial debut work in
1998, Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl (Tian Yu). The movie was a big
winner at the Golden Horse Award, winning Chen the Best Director award
and the leading actress Li Xiaolu, then just 14, the Best Actress
award.
In 2000, she became the first Chinese-born actress to direct a
Hollywood film, the romantic drama Autumn in New York, starring
Richard Gere.
"The inner urge to seek the next thing keeps me busy and I think it is
a good thing for an actress, especially for a Chinese actress working
in Hollywood," she says. "My options were limited so I hoped I could
create more possibilities either as an actress or a director."
In 2004, she starred in Zhang Yimou's former photographer Hou Yong's
family drama Jasmine Women (Moli Huakai) alongside actress Zhang Ziyi,
as mother and daughter spanning three generations in Shanghai.
In Ang Lee's Lust, Caution (Se Jie), she plays a Shanghai wife against
Tony Leung and in the same year she starred in Jiang Wen's The Sun
Also Rises (Taiyang Zhaochang Shengqi) for which she received an Asian
Film Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her most recent international
presence was as a factory worker in Jia Zhangke's 24 City (Er Shi Si
Cheng Ji), which was nominated for the Golden Palm award at Cannes
Film Festival.
With all this glamour and recognition on screen, Chen is the ultimate
East-goes-West success story. What's next?
"Actually, my life in the US is quite simple and even boring. I walk
around the neighborhood and climb the mountains everyday, while taking
care of my children and cooking for my husband," she says.
"And, of course, thinking of my next movie."