He's a Woman, She's a Man 金枝玉叶

Wing (Anita Yuen) is perhaps the most devoted fan of the pop star Rose (Carina Lau), watching with bated breath as her beautiful romance with her producer and songwriter Sam Koo (Leslie Cheung) unfolds. From the outside, their love seems perfect, and Wing wishes them nothing but happiness, so when Sam announces a talent contest, the winner of which he will take under his wing, Wing realizes this is her chance to get at least a little closer to her idols. The only problem is that Sam is looking for a man, and Wing, disguised as a young man, shows up for the interview. By a twist of fate, she manages to win, but once she finds herself in Sam's house, she realizes that his relationship with Rose is far from as ideal as it appears on screen, and that perhaps Wing is exactly the one he needs for complete happiness.

Impressions: One of UFO's earliest films, at the time it received as many as eight HKFA nominations, but now, when we have a chance to look back over the entire output of the filmmakers at that studio, it becomes obvious that this is far from their best film. There is nothing particularly wrong with it; it is shot openly, lightly and with soul, but the absence of flaws does not yet make a picture perfect.

Peter Chan, who directed the film, was always the weakest of all the UFO directors – comedy and humor in general come hard to him. And so He's a Woman, She's a Man makes a strong impression in its dramatic episodes (the scene at the end where Carina Lau and Leslie Cheung sort out their relationship), but turns rather silly and naive once humor comes into play. Anita Yuen, who half a year before this film had played the lead in the tear-jerking melodrama C'est la vie, mon chéri (for which she won an HKFA award), once again plays an eternal girl gazing in awe at life with wide-open little eyes, but in this film her slightly fairy-tale image does not quite fit into the real world. It is hard to believe that she could attract the attention of Sam, who is looking for an "ordinary" girl; hard to take her for a young man; hard, in the end, simply to endure her "cute" little pouts and her obsession with dolls, which she starts talking to every time the plot needs to clarify what her character is feeling. On top of that, the actress often rings plainly false and "buzzes."

The humor, forcibly lowered to the level of the tender "adorable silliness," works far from always, and many potentially interesting moves that could have been drawn from such a promising setup turn out either to be ignored or simply underdeveloped. The characters spend a lot of time on screen talking, but they never turn from puppets in the director's hands into three-dimensional personalities whose problems one wants to sympathize with. And the actors really do try – Leslie Cheung, Carina Lau and even Eric Tsang in the small but most interesting role in the film, that of Sam's gay friend and adviser, all demonstrate excellent professional acting. But the film itself never becomes anything more than animated pictures – beautiful, sometimes touching, sometimes sweet, sometimes sad. But only pictures – watch and forget. Or put on the shelf so that, in the absence of a better alternative, you can admire them again.