All-star cast for AIDS movie
By Min Lee |
March 23, 2011, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
CHINESE director Gu Changwei's first film in four years has an all-star case in a drama exploring how AIDS impacts a rural Chinese village.
"Til Death Do Us Part" stars Zhang Ziyi and actor-singer Aaron Kwok and the cast also includes Gu's wife Jiang Wenli and veteran actor Pu Cunxin, as well as real AIDS patients.
Gu said the role of an ostracized patient "really belonged to no one other than Ziyi."
Zhang, whose recent credits include romantic comedy "Sophie's Revenge" and English-language thriller "The Horsemen," said her role as a social outcast was extremely absorbing.
"It was very hard to separate myself from the character at any given moment. I was always living in the world of my character," Zhang said at a news conference yesterday during the Hong Kong International Film Festival.
Gu started as a cinematographer for Chinese directors Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige on movies such as "Red Sorghum," "Ju Dou" and "Farewell My Concubine."
His directorial debut, the 2005 family drama "Peacock," won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, and he followed it two years later with "And the Spring Comes," starring his wife as a school teacher who aspires to be an opera singer.
Both Gu and Jiang praised Kwok's performance in the AIDS movie.
Kwok won back-to-back best actor trophies at Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards - the Chinese industry's equivalent of the Oscars - in 2005 and 2006 for crime thriller "Divergence" and drama "After This Our Exile."
Both Gu and Jiang said they couldn't picture the glamorous Hong Kong star as a down-to-earth villager but were pleasantly surprised.
"I was thinking, 'How could it be Aaron Kwok? He is so different,'" Jiang said. "But when I came on set on the first day I couldn't recognize him. That's when I thought he had succeeded."
"Til Death Do Us Part" is released in China on May 10.
A companion documentary had its Asian premiere at the film festival earlier this week. In "Together," Chinese filmmaker Zhao Liang recorded the difficulties of finding AIDS patients to appear in the film.
"Til Death Do Us Part" stars Zhang Ziyi and actor-singer Aaron Kwok and the cast also includes Gu's wife Jiang Wenli and veteran actor Pu Cunxin, as well as real AIDS patients.
Gu said the role of an ostracized patient "really belonged to no one other than Ziyi."
Zhang, whose recent credits include romantic comedy "Sophie's Revenge" and English-language thriller "The Horsemen," said her role as a social outcast was extremely absorbing.
"It was very hard to separate myself from the character at any given moment. I was always living in the world of my character," Zhang said at a news conference yesterday during the Hong Kong International Film Festival.
Gu started as a cinematographer for Chinese directors Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige on movies such as "Red Sorghum," "Ju Dou" and "Farewell My Concubine."
His directorial debut, the 2005 family drama "Peacock," won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, and he followed it two years later with "And the Spring Comes," starring his wife as a school teacher who aspires to be an opera singer.
Both Gu and Jiang praised Kwok's performance in the AIDS movie.
Kwok won back-to-back best actor trophies at Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards - the Chinese industry's equivalent of the Oscars - in 2005 and 2006 for crime thriller "Divergence" and drama "After This Our Exile."
Both Gu and Jiang said they couldn't picture the glamorous Hong Kong star as a down-to-earth villager but were pleasantly surprised.
"I was thinking, 'How could it be Aaron Kwok? He is so different,'" Jiang said. "But when I came on set on the first day I couldn't recognize him. That's when I thought he had succeeded."
"Til Death Do Us Part" is released in China on May 10.
A companion documentary had its Asian premiere at the film festival earlier this week. In "Together," Chinese filmmaker Zhao Liang recorded the difficulties of finding AIDS patients to appear in the film.
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