![]() In addition to her breathtaking physical grace, she has always had, and still has, a movie-star face in the old-fashioned sense of the word-the camera revels in it. Movies like those made Yeoh a star in Asia, and it’s easy to see why. And an actor who can’t be easily categorized is far more likely to slip through the cracks.Ĭhan Kam Chuen-Sony Pictures/Everett Collection And because Yeoh, in particular, is so terrific in both the action scenes and the dramatic ones, she automatically had at least one strike against her: in addition to the fact that circa the early 2000s Hollywood barely knew what to do with terrific Asian performers-a pattern that’s only now beginning to change-Yeoh was simply too good at too many things. Though Crouching Tiger, produced overseas, became the highest-grossing foreign-language film in American history, its success seemed to be linked to its achievement as an action spectacle-an admittedly glorious one-rather than to the equally spectacular appeal of its stars. And here may lie the key to why it took so long for Yeoh to become a star in the United States. But those who have loved her for years (including, clearly, Everything’s directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) aren’t surprised that Hollywood is finally recognizing her as a star-even as we’re rolling our googly eyes over why it took so long.Ĭrouching Tiger, in addition to featuring a number of astonishing martial arts sequences-many of them enhanced by traditional wuxia wirework, which creates the illusion that characters are floating through air-is built around two love stories: That of Jen and sexy bad-boy desert warrior Lo (Chang Chen), and the more muted current of desire connecting Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai. As far as the Academy is concerned, Yeoh is a sixtyish newcomer. The performance has earned Yeoh an Academy Award nomination, most likely not because her martial arts moves are magnificent (she has always done most of her own stunts), but because she brings such a complex swirl of anxious gravity to her character. In the Daniels’ existential action fantasy Everything Everywhere All at Once, Yeoh plays Evelyn, the stressed-out owner of a laundry facility who’s transported into a complex multiverse where she becomes an action hero. To movie lovers who are also fans of the Hong Kong films of the 1990s, commonly recognized as that industry’s golden age, Michelle Yeoh’s recent Hollywood rise isn’t particularly surprising some of us have grown long white Pai Mei-style beards waiting for it.
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