One is a brash thriller about a policeman's attempt to arraign a tycoon's evil scion in corruption-driven 1960s Hong Kong, the other a subtle drama about alienation among elderly Chinese migrants in the US in the 1990s. So Lawrence Lau Kwok-cheung's Arrest the Restless and Ang Lee's Pushing Hands are very different beasts.
But they do have one thing in common: both feature Wang Lai, the veteran actress whose appearances in these two films - released in Hong Kong on the same day, May 14, 1992 - would bring the curtain down on a long screen career which began in Beijing in the early 1950s.
Wang spent the better part of her four decades on celluloid as a character actor playing second fiddle to top-billing stars. In Arrest the Restless, her part as a long-suffering matriarch was largely overshadowed by the film's cops-and-triads machinations. She had long been relegated to playing the mother of the lead character. That was even the case early in her career, such as when she appeared as the middle-aged maternal foil to Linda Lin Dai in 1957's Golden Lotus: she was only in her early 30s.
Wang made her debut as a 27-year-old in Zhao Shushen's Return of the Pearl (1954), two years after she moved to Hong Kong from the mainland. Her poignant performance in Pushing Hands as a Beijing-born, Taiwan-raised woman trying to come to terms with American life earned her an award at the Golden Horses. But the spectre of her supporting-act past continued to haunt her: while her character was the female lead, she could only find a footing in the best supporting actress category.
In fact, Wang's four Golden Horses statuettes were all from that class: she also won for Father and Son (1963), The Unsinkable Miss Calabash (1981) and The Third Bridge (1988). Typically candid, Wang said it was 'a question of the organisers' prejudices' that she wasn't considered for the best actress award for both Pushing Hands and The Third Bridge.
Award ceremonies' headlines fade, however, and what remains are the films themselves. Pushing Hands showcases Wang's skills as she matches the nuanced turn of co-star Sihung Lung as a Taiwanese pensioner trying to adjust to life in the US - every step of the way. Pushing Hands was a great way to conclude her career.
