Lin, Brigitte

(neé Lin Qingxin/Lam Ching Ha, a.k.a.Venus Lin)

b. 1954, Taipei, Taiwan

Film actress

Brigitte Lin started her career playing romantic heroines before reaching international fame through her transgender parts in martial arts films. She had made more than a hundred films in Taiwan and Hong Kong before her marriage in 1994. Lin first appeared as a troubled teenager in Song Cunshou’s Outside the Window (Chuanwai, 1972), and was soon working in Hong Kong. In Patrick Tam Kar-ming’s Love Massacre (Aisha, 1981), she still wears flowery dresses, but wields a knife against a killer. Ann Hui cast her as a liberated woman in Starry is the Night (Jinye xingguang canlan, 1988), and Yim Ho gave her the part of writer Eileen Chang (Zhang, Ailing) in his fictionalized biopic, Red Dust (Gungun hongchen, 1990).

In 1986, Tsui Hark dressed her in men’s clothes for Peking Opera Blues (Dao ma dan). An icon was born. Lin was mesmerizing as the castrated villain, Asia the Invincible, in parts II and III of the Swordsman (Xiao’ao jianghu) produced by Tsui in 1992 and 1993. Other martial arts movies followed, notably Ronny Yu Yan-tai’s The Bride with White Hair (Baifa monü zhuan) series in 1992 and 1993. Her most fascinating, enigmatic parts are in two movies directed by Wong Kar-wai in 1994: the dual gender-switching role of Yin and Yang in Ashes of Time (Dongxie xidu) and the drug-runner with a blonde wig in Chungking Express (Chongqing senlin).

See also: cinema in Taiwan

BÉRÉNICE REYNAUD