[Column] China's star system - not what it seems from the West

By Derek Elley, contributing writer to Cine21

Walking along the street in Beijing recently, looking at what the "pirates" had on offer, I was struck by a curious thing: on the cover of the pirated DVD version of "The Banquet" was not Zhang Ziyi but supporting actress Zhou Xun.

Stardom is a fragile thing, its currency often non-exchangeable across borders. But this was a Chinese DVD of a Chinese film on sale in China, and surely Zhang was the film's main marketing draw, wasn't she? After all, it was her face gracing all the film's advertising posters.

A few days later, I was chatting with a film magazine editor and mentioned Zhang's absence from the pirate DVD cover. He didn't look surprised. "She was only cast in the film to boost Western sales," he said. "Her name can't launch a film in China."

I'd heard talk for several years that Zhang - like Gong Li before her - was not as popular among Mainland Chinese audiences as you might expect from all the hype in the West. But the confirmation was still a shock. I asked the editor, an experienced journalist who knew the industry inside out, which Mainland Chinese stars could launch a movie in China.

"Only Ge You." Ge, the 49-year-old actor of some 30 movies since the mid-1980s, is hardly known outside China and is the antithesis of the usual male movie star. Largely known for his delivery of ironic comic lines in a distinctive Beijing drawl, and with bald looks that could charitably be described as "interesting", he's long been the favorite actor (and screen alter ego) of director Feng Xiaogang, the Mainland's most bankable mainstream director and the pioneer a decade ago of popular quality cinema in China.

When I mentioned other stars' names, the editor shook his head. Jiang Wen hasn't had a box-office hit in years and he's now concentrating on directing; Gong, now over 40, is well past her prime in Chinese terms; and Xu Jinglei may write one of the world's most popular blogs - 62 million hits in one year - but her name has little box-office clout.

Younger actresses like Zhao Wei and Zhou Xun are popular in TV dramas but can't launch a film on name alone. That's why Zhou's picture was on the cover of the pirate DVD: to draw stay-at-home viewers, who generally watch TV dramas and see most movies on DVD. In that respect, pirated DVDs - whose artwork is selected purely in order to sell the product - are often a better guide to the real business than legitimate DVDs, which have to use studio-approved artwork and advertising campaigns.

"You have to understand that the Mainland Chinese film industry is director-driven when it comes to marketing," said the editor.

The three biggest Mainland directors are Feng, Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. That's why, at a time when all the talk in China is about "da pian" (big-budget films), even Feng - previously famous for comedies about everyday life - climbed on board the big-budget bandwagon with "The Banquet." Despite mixed reviews, the film has been the biggest grosser of his entire career.

And now Feng is currently filming not a small, ironic slice-of-life comedy but a $10 million war drama, "The Assembly Call," which uses technicians from both "Saving Private Ryan" and "Taegukgi." There are no well-known actors in the movie, not even Ge.

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