Wing Chun is about as much of a true story as 300 is (so… not) but instead of absurdly over-the-top “epic” dialogue that makes you laugh while secretly worrying that Frank Miller wrote it completely straight-faced, you’ll be cringing and hoping that Yuen Woo-ping and his writers didn’t really think their wacky hijinx were the height of comedy.
Fortunately, like 300, Wing Chun’s impressive action and intriguing gender/sexuality issues more than make up for any other deficiencies. Of course, it’s only natural to marry martial arts with gender issues in a film loosely based on the story of Yim Wing Chun–the legendary female creator of her eponymous martial arts style–but Yuen Woo-ping also wisely avoids simplistic conclusions and didactic feminist messages. In one action scene at the film’s mid-point, the main antagonist wedges a spear into a crevice on a rock wall and dares our female protagonist to pull it out in three rounds. After a lengthy fight sequence on the ground, in the air and even balancing on the spear, the sexual metaphor shifts from obvious to just plain baffling when the fight ends with the spear shattering through the wall and Wing Chun holding it victoriously on the other side.
This “fuck it” attitude extends to the film’s historical accuracy and the plot construction as well. The tale begins with Wing Chun (Michelle Yeoh), an unmarried woman and skilled martial artist living in a remote village, fighting off a bunch of pillaging and raping bandits while no other man around her is half as effective. Despite her heroics, she and her loud brazen Auntie (Yuen King-Tan) are not at all considered marriage material. Instead, it’s the meek, soft-spoken widow Charmy (Catherine Hung Yan) who drives all the men in town crazy. When Wing Chun’s childhood friend, Leung Pok-to (Donnie Yen) returns to town and scholar Wong Hok Chow (Waise Lee) also decides he wants to marry, a wild love pentagon is formed and filled with mistaken identities, gender confusion, sexual innuendo and physical action-oriented comedy.
The plotting, characters and the light farcical approach seems to be more inspired by Shakespearean comedies like Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream than any actual history. While Wing Chun’s dialogue and humor are nowhere near as clever and witty, the fast-paced wire-fu action sequences are the clear physical manifestation of Shakespeare’s battles of wit. With clean shots and a slightly ramped up speed, fights find a happy blend of Yuen’s Drunken Master choreography and King Hu’s visual style to make inventive use of the environment and flow at the perfect speed to surprise viewers. One battle over a simple slab of tofu will enthrall any viewer for a full unblinking five minutes and the visual pun of a man doing pommel horse acrobatics on an actual horse is so dumb it goes right back to being funny. Combined with an admittedly adorable romance, fine acting and a bandit villain who shouts the names of his attacks like ‘Cotton Belly’ and ‘Magnificent Kick,’ it’s rather hard to hold anything against the film whenever there’s a misstep. Though Feng Xiaogang’s ambitious Hamlet adaptation was little more than boring and pretty, Wing Chun is proof that a Shakespearean comedy can be a fine template for a fun martial arts flick.
Reviewed by Tarun
