Hong Kong film icon Tony Leung, now in the fourth decade of his celebrated profession, nonetheless hasn’t misplaced the behavior of getting out to the movie show.
“Even to this day, I go and watch movies at the cinema four or five times a week,” the actor mentioned Tuesday at the Tokyo Worldwide Movie Competition, the place he’s serving as the president of the occasion’s competitors jury. “I’ve been doing this since I was small.”
But the actor — beloved by cineastes for his work in Received Kar Wai’s In the Temper for Love, Ang Lee’s Lust, Warning, and Zhang Yimou’s Hero, amongst so many others — mentioned judging films throughout a movie pageant makes for a “totally different” viewing expertise and that tends to go away him anxious.
Leung is joined on the Tokyo jury this 12 months by fellow Hong Kong movie titan Johnnie To, Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi, Japanese actress Ai Hashimoto, and French actress Chiara Mastroianni, daughter of European movie legends Marcello Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve.
“Watching movies while serving as the jury president and working alongside these wonderful jury panel members, I often feel that maybe I’m not educated enough — or maybe I’m not smart enough,” Leung mentioned, laughing.
To, who directed Leung in the 1998 Hong Kong crime thriller The Longest Nite, was extra sanguine about his function at the pageant. The filmmaker — a famous gourmand and wine connoisseur, not to point out the creator of about a dozen Hong Kong classics, together with Mad Detective, Election and Breaking Information — mentioned he visits Tokyo a number of occasions annually to get pleasure from Japan’s “wonderful cuisine.” He added that he and Leung had been sharing suggestions on their favourite eating places in the Japanese capital, arguably the world’s best meals metropolis. But the director mentioned he was additionally in Tokyo with “work to do” this week and would convey an open thoughts to the pageant’s various movie choice.
“In the past, I had anticipation or expectations before watching a film. In most cases, I was disappointed,” To mentioned. “So now, I try not to have any filters or assumptions before seeing a movie. It should be more intuitive,” he defined. “I just want to immerse myself in movies.”
Mastroianni, whose newest function, Marcello Mio, is about as the 2024 Tokyo fest’s closing function, famous that Leung’s frequent moviegoing is much from the norm these days.
“Unfortunately, around the world now, the habit of going to the cinema is something very precious and very rare, because people have taken new habits — because of platforms, COVID and many other reasons,” she mentioned. “I very much admire people who still fight to defend the film festivals, because I think it’s not only the occasion to discover wonderful filmmakers, but it’s also an opportunity to rediscover what it’s like watching a movie in a theater with people surrounding you — people you don’t know, but whom you’re going to share this wonderful experience with.”
