Film Response Paper on Center Stage by Stanley Kwan (1992)

One common critique of Stanley Kwan’s Center Stage (1992) is that it is hard to follow because it seems disjointed or fragmented. The film shifts from scenes shot in the making of Center Stage to clips from films of the 1930s. Still photos are sometimes shown also, and the storyline shifts from scenes where Maggie Cheung plays Ruan Ling-yu in films, to scenes where Cheung plays Ling-yu as herself, an actor portraying another actor. Then there are scenes where Cheung plays herself and discusses the film with others or talks about it herself. These fragmented scenes add depth and originality to the film. Many scenes include backgrounds of paned windows, sectioned wall paneling, and tiled floors that allude to fragmentation also. The fragmented backgrounds hint at the fragmented story line, the fragmented culture of China, and the fragmented lives of the people portrayed in the film. Their presence adds another layer of depth to the film.

Throughout the film, a constant is the paned windows in the background of many scenes. The photos shown at the beginning of the film taken in the past depict paned windows. The first scene where Cheung plays Ling-yu, the scene opens with a camera angle shot through paned windows looking down from above. Soon after is a scene where Cheung as Ling-yu looks out of paned windows at snow. There are numerous scenes where the camera shoots Cheung as Ling-yu through paned windows. Kwan is also filmed discussing the film early in the movie sitting in front of paned windows.

The persistent presence of the paned windows and, later, other segmented items, are self-reflexive, a common trait in postmodern art, literature and film. While that is an important element in Center Stage, Shuqin Cui, author of Women Through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema, explains that it is also a depiction of the Chinese culture. “China shows signs of postmodern fragmentation: the transformation of popular culture, spreading commercialization, and application of postmodern ideas in literary and cinematic experimentation” (Cui 32). By including the numerous images of paned glass and other backdrop items, Kwan is not only acknowledging the fragmentation of the film he is making, but also the fragmentation of the society that the film depicts by juxtaposing the past with the present (which is now the past).

One important scene is the dance scene that begins around 32:30 and extends to 38:30. In this scene Cheung as Ling-yu is dancing in a large dance hall with a band in the background. Behind the band is a window that is paned, but not in square segments. Instead, the panes are in the shape of a fan. When the music is playing, the window illuminates the dance floor. When the music stops, the light dims and the dance hall is dimly lit. Kwan may have included the unusually shaped window panes as a reference to cultural illumination, since that seems to be their purpose. The dance scene is a re-creation of a movie scene from the 1930s. During the scene Cheung as Ling-yu flirts with a presumably married man with whom she later has an affair either in the context of the 1930s film or in the context of reality. Perhaps this was the man that prompted Ling-yu to commit suicide. The movement between illumination and darkness represent the way Center Stage sheds light on Ling-yu’s life, but not completely as it is difficult to understand who she was by watching Center Stage, as it is partially fictional also. Cui says, “The critical receiver recognizes the process of film production and its fragmented suggestiveness and acknowledges the crisis in re-presentation” (Cui 43). Not knowing what the fragmented backdrops represent also cause the viewer to understand the fragmentation of the storyline.

By including the paned windows and other backdrop items in so many scenes, Kwan effectively represented several elements of the film. First, of course, the fragmented way in which the story is told. Then the fragmentation of Chinese culture and society. Finally, the way in which viewers interpret the film is also represented in the repeated images of the segmented background.

Works Cited

Center Stage. Dir. Stanley Kwan. Perf. Maggie Cheung. 1992. YouTube. 30 December 2019.

Cui, Shuqin. "Reconstructing History: The (Im)possible Engagement between Feminism and Postmodernism in Stanley Kwan’s Center Stage." Cui, Shuqin. Women Through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 2003. 30-48. E-book. 30