[
www.sfgate.com]
G. Allen Johnson, Chronicle Staff Writer
We've heard this one before. A phenomenally successful pop star, already an icon in her early 20s, acts in a movie. It's usually a formula for disaster -- remember Madonna sleepwalking through "Shanghai Surprise''? And what was Britney Spears doing in that awful road movie "Crossroads"?
But Anita Mui Yim-fong was different. In 1987, she was already known as the Madonna of Asia for her raunchy onstage antics and tabloid life, but at 24 Mui became a legend when she pulled off one of the most subtly powerful performances in Hong Kong film history, playing a ghost from a bygone era searching for lost love Leslie Cheung in "Rouge."
Like her character Fleur, Mui departed this world too soon. She died Dec. 30 of complications from cervical cancer at age 40, and in her final hours, as word spread that the end was near, dozens of Hong Kong stars, including Jackie Chan and Bond girl Michelle Yeoh, flooded her hospital room for a final visit. Her funeral is Sunday.
The death of one of the key icons of the so-called golden age of Hong Kong film (about the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s) turned Hong Kong's New Year's Eve parties into half celebration, half wake -- thousands poured into that city's Times Square to hear Canto-pop stars sing Mui's greatest hits before the clock struck 2004.
It seems fitting; Mui's MO was always a healthy dose of wistful reflection, keeping happiness at arm's length. She started out as a child singer, performing with her sister Ann, but didn't make it big until she grew up. Suddenly these silly little pop tunes were infused with a soulful lilt, thanks to a voice that was now unusually deep for a woman. She shot to fame after beating out 3,000 contestants in an "American Idol"-type talent contest, and her songs, like "Bad Girl," became powerful anthems of a woman willing to go it alone.
It's that combination of strength and melancholy that director Stanley Kwan tapped into in "Rouge," which earned Mui a best actress award at Asia's version of the Oscars. Western film fans who know Mui from her comedic turns in two Jackie Chan films (the shopkeeper in "Rumble in the Bronx" and Chan's domineering stepmother in "Legend of the Drunken Master" ) probably would be surprised by her fragile work in "Rouge," or her last film, "July Rhapsody" (2002), in which she played a wife who watches helplessly as her 20-year marriage falls apart.
In between those two performances were 40-plus movies, 40-plus CDs that sold more than 10 million copies, and an up-and-down life. There was a three- year break in singing after a nightclub incident in which Mui was slapped by a known gangster, who was then murdered three days later (Mui was cleared of any involvement). A night owl, she frustrated many a director who scheduled morning shoots, but won them over with spot-on performances -- like Chow Yun- fat's gun moll in "Better Tomorrow III"; a masked Wonder Woman who teams with Yeoh and Maggie Cheung to battle evil in "The Heroic Trio" and "Executioners"; a reclusive pop star with a tumultuous personal life (some stretch) in "Who's the Woman, Who's the Man."
She also threw herself into charity work, using her fame to fund a variety of causes. She once raised money to save a San Francisco nursing home; last year she led a campaign to help the families of SARS victims. After the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, while other stars steered clear of the politics, she openly called for democracy in China.
The recent years had seen an upswing in Mui's movie career after a four- year break -- she starred in five movies in a little more than two years, and last year she was cast in Zhang Yimou's historical epic, "House of the Flying Daggers," opposite "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" vixen Zhang Ziyi. But in early 2003, Cheung, her "Rouge" co-star and one of her closest friends, committed suicide. Mui was told she had cancer.
Reports say Mui, crushed by her sister's death from cancer in 2000 and Cheung's suicide, initially denied treatment because of a distrust with Western medicine. Whatever the case, her doctors later would say that at the time of diagnosis, the cancer was eminently beatable. She called a news conference in September to confirm tabloid reports of her disease, and defiantly vowed to beat the cancer: "I am not a loser or a weakling, even though I am a patient."
It became clear, however, that would not happen. Mui hastily scheduled a series of concerts in Hong Kong, her last coming on Nov. 15. By all accounts, she was as flamboyant as ever, with her trademark surrealistic costumes and powerful voice, though sometimes she seemed out of breath. Her bizarre exit had her wearing a white wedding dress, telling the crowd that it had become apparent that she would never marry, then leaving the stage through a set of church doors.
One of those who grasped Mui's proper legacy was Zhang Yimou, who, although currently filming "House of the Flying Daggers," had held off on Mui's scenes until she got well. After her death, instead of recasting her part, he wrote her character out of the script "out of respect."
He knows there's no replacing someone like her.
