“The sound most familiar to me was that of bones breaking,” she says. Bow down. (Spoilers for The Grandmaster )
The Grandmaster is the latest film by director Wong Kar-wai — it stars Zhang Ziyi, best known in the U.S. for her roles in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Memoirs of a Geisha. In this film, which premiered stateside Aug. 23, she plays Gong Er, a total badass.
"It wasn't my choice," says the kung fu master who is incidentally a woman. "But I'll make my mark."
There are four taboos in kung fu, a male character in Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmaster explains: "Monks, Taoist priests, women, and children." Three of the taboos are left unexamined in the film, but Gong Er, a kung fu master and maxim machine, forces us to think about female trouble. Although she's shut out of the male world of martial arts, she repeatedly shows herself to be a fierce fighter and a general force to be reckoned with.
When Ip Man (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), the male protagonist of the movie, disregards the taboo and accepts her challenge to fight, Miss Gong simultaneously enchants him and kicks his ass.
