The Soong Sisters (1997)
Reviewed by: shelly on 2001-05-25
The terrible censorship struggles that Cheung Yuen-ting and Alex Law Kai-yui confronted to make the Soong Sisters in the PRC only partially explain the complex failure of this film. It's possible to have various reactions to it at the same time: as spectacle, the film is splendid. Sumptuous period recreations create a sustained level of visual power. And several key scenes (Chiang Kai-shek's response to student protestors; the night-time airplane landing) draw their power precisely from how they look, how they are shot. But the screenplay, and consequentally the performances, seem bogged down: by the weight of their historical significance? by the burden of morally uplifting storytelling that Cheung and Law seem to be labouring under? Too often, the film trudges through its duty to register China's complex, ambiguous history through the lives of its glamourous principal characters. So the film veers towards cliche, with its characters shrinking to embodying various principles, causes and options for the Nation. We end up discovering precious little about the sisters, as individuals, and what we learn of the Nation seems generalized, text-book-shaped. Stand out performances, though, by Wu Hsing-kuo, as a mesmerizingly charismatic Chiang Kai-shek, Jiang Wen, as an ebullient Charlie Soong, and Maggie Cheung, who almost manages to bring Soong Ching-ling to life.