Chien-An Yuan: City of Light, City of Shadow
In the mood for love on the Chungking Express as tears go by happy together speaks of neon and noir. As in an urban landscape romanticized on the Silver Screen, glamorized by James Wong Howe, and celebrated in Technicolor. Where otherwise illuminated faces and obscured figures striking insouciant poses look familiar, gazing back from a bygone and faraway era not forgotten.
Reflections of ourselves as if love letters composed to the postwar generation our grand parents or even parents belonged to. But from central casting in the spotlight as iconic images of a bouffant styled Maggie Cheung elegantly clad in red silk qipao. And pixieish Faye Wong riding the moving walkway for public transportation or a slick-haired Tony Leung nonchalantly dragging on his cigarette in a smoke-filled room listening to cool jazz or Cantonese pop.
That is the rose-colored lens Chien-An Yuan looks through that he so lovingly recreates, somewhere between so Miami Vice by way of Hong Kong and Roaring Twenties Shanghai. Reminding us of when early twentieth century America and fledgling Hollywood saw Anna May Wong and Sessue Hayakawa through genuine starstruck eyes beyond the Birth of a Nation narrative.