Wing Chun

Yim Wing Chun sells tofu, dresses as a man and is a martial artist in a town beset by bandits. The people treat her as their protector and at the same time as someone who has forgotten she is a woman. Leung Pok To, her childhood sweetheart, comes looking for her years later and does not recognise her, mistaking Charmy, the widow known for her beauty, for her instead. At the same time the bandit chief abducts Charmy. The film puts the fights and the comedy in the same scene: mistaken identity, clothes and jokes about gender are built into the combat. That is also the real subject, how a woman fighter is seen and the fact that Wing Chun never feels obliged to explain herself to anyone. Yuen Woo-ping directed. Michelle Yeoh plays Wing Chun and Donnie Yen plays Leung Pok To. The fight design is Yuen's own, and the sequence at the tofu stall is one of the best-remembered examples of wire choreography combined with food. Who it is for: anyone who likes Hong Kong martial arts cinema, Michelle Yeoh and wirework. Who it is not for: anyone looking for realism. Physics is ignored, the comic passages interrupt the story, and Charmy is reduced to jokes about being beautiful.