Ani­mal Instincts: a con­ver­sa­tion with Tang Wei

The Chi­nese actor Tang Wei was cat­a­pult­ed to fame when she was select­ed from a mas­sive cast­ing process to play the lead in Ang Lee’s 2007 erot­ic peri­od dra­ma, Lust, Cau­tion. The con­tro­ver­sy caused by that film led her career down a few unex­pect­ed byways, and she tri­umphant­ly returns to van­guard of screen act­ing with her mes­meris­ing role in Park Chan-wook’s Deci­sion to Leave, where she plays the enig­mat­ic wid­ow and social car­er, Seo-rae.

LWLies: What was your first encounter with Park Chanwook’s cin­e­ma? As a film­mak­er who tends to focus on extreme sub­ject mat­ter and extreme emo­tions, was he always some­one who appealed to you as a poten­tial collaborator?

Tang: I remem­ber the first time I watched a Park Chan-wook film was in col­lege. Dur­ing that peri­od, I would play all the discs I col­lect­ed and I saw Old­boy. In the film, the main char­ac­ter was carved into the wall in his cell. Lat­er, he was eat­ing octo­pus which stuck onto his face as he put it into his mouth. Those scenes remain fresh in my mem­o­ry. At that time, I wasn’t very famil­iar with Kore­an cin­e­ma and knew noth­ing about that film. I just put the disc on and start­ed watch­ing. It had a great impact on me. As for col­lab­o­rat­ing with Direc­tor Park, I had nev­er thought about it or dared to think about it. Even now I find it unbe­liev­able that I have played a lead­ing role in one of his films. I am very grate­ful for that.

Can you talk a lit­tle bit about what you did before the first day of shoot­ing? Prepa­ra­tions, rit­u­als, tech­niques you used to enhance the experience?

Before shoot­ing, I had already spent some time with the crew, learn­ing the Kore­an trans­la­tion and work­ing on my lines. I also liked to vis­it the set while the direc­tor and Park Hae-il were shoot­ing. Think­ing back, there was one inter­est­ing thing: before we start­ed shoot­ing, Hae-il and I went to the Chi­na­town in Busan near our hotel and we were sur­prised to find a tiny tem­ple called Shaolin Tem­ple. I still remem­ber in that tem­ple, both of us kept walk­ing and walk­ing and we entered the main hall togeth­er with a tac­it under­stand­ing. There were hard­ly any peo­ple there. We then sat down, one after the oth­er, just like Hae-jun and Seo-rae do in the film. Think­ing about it now, it’s as though we had already expe­ri­enced the scene as it is in the film, before it was shot. It’s kind of mag­ic. It’s amaz­ing, and it has only just occurred to me!

When you first read the script, what was your ini­tial impres­sion of the char­ac­ter of Seo-rae? Did that change while you were mak­ing the film?

When I first read the script, I won­dered if the sto­ry was set in mod­ern times. How could some­one have such a fate? It felt so far away from our lives. Espe­cial­ly after cos­tume fit­ting, I knew it was not a peri­od dra­ma, which made things even more con­fus­ing. Lat­er on, when we were doing a press con­fer­ence, I was chat­ting with my Kore­an inter­preter. She told me that in Direc­tor Park’s films, Japan­ese are not real­ly Japan­ese, Kore­ans are not real­ly Kore­an, and hence Chi­nese are not real­ly Chinese.

Direc­tor Park doesn’t employ a real­is­tic way of depict­ing these char­ac­ters. It made a lot of sense to me, and all the dots start­ed to con­nect. I can’t watch any hor­ror, ghost films or films with bloody vio­lence – but I am not afraid of the vio­lence and hor­ror ele­ments in direc­tor Park’s films. Prob­a­bly it’s because the pre­sen­ta­tion of those ele­ments has been fil­tered through his aes­thet­ic and philo­soph­i­cal lens­es. I haven’t dis­cussed this with him so those are pure­ly my per­son­al feelings.

Lan­guage and com­mu­ni­ca­tion are key com­po­nents of the dra­ma in Deci­sion to Leave. As a per­son of Chi­nese her­itage speak­ing Kore­an, how did you take on that challenge?

In my pre­vi­ous films, I’ve spo­ken Man­darin, Can­tonese and Eng­lish. I should explain that I am from Hangzhou in the south of Chi­na, and if you go fur­ther south, the dialects are like for­eign lan­guages. So, using stan­dard Man­darin in my per­for­mance was also a bit chal­leng­ing, as it’s quite dif­fer­ent to the lan­guage I use every day. For Can­tonese and Eng­lish, I need­ed to learn those from scratch, which took many months. In Deci­sion to Leave, most of my lines are in Kore­an. Although I am mar­ried to a Kore­an, in our dai­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion we rarely speak to each oth­er in Kore­an. There­fore, I spent most of my efforts on the lan­guage part of this film.

Before the shoot, I spent almost all of my spare time lis­ten­ing to the Kore­an lines that Direc­tor Park and Park Hae-il record­ed for me. Basi­cal­ly, while I was per­form­ing, I referred to Direc­tor Park’s guide sto­ry­board which we called ​‘con­ti’, but I’m not sure how well I exe­cut­ed it.

The film is pow­ered by the unread­abil­i­ty of your char­ac­ter. How do you go about trans­mit­ting ambi­gu­i­ty through performance?

I can’t real­ly ​‘play’ an ambigu­ous and mys­te­ri­ous char­ac­ter. Look­ing back, what I focused on dur­ing shoot­ing was my under­stand­ing of the char­ac­ter; while Direc­tor Park focused on the ​“ambigu­ous and mys­te­ri­ous” part, which draws the audi­ence to the cin­e­ma to watch the film again and again. When I was per­form­ing, I pre­ferred to deliv­er the role based on my own under­stand­ing. I often pre­sent­ed my thoughts about the char­ac­ter to him in great detail, and he would use some of the things that he liked and would even devel­op the role based on them, which made the rela­tion­ship between char­ac­ters more flexible.

Our scriptwriter, Jeong Seo-kyeong, said that it was the first time she found a film she wrote didn’t feel it was writ­ten by her­self. Even with the same lines, it would feel like some­thing dif­fer­ent. Then I thought, I have tried to get myself into the world of the char­ac­ter, to be able to under­stand her life and log­ic. In the script, in all the del­i­cate­ly laid-out struc­ture, in each nuanced con­sid­er­a­tion, the direc­tor arranged every­thing prop­er­ly. What I need­ed to do was just present his ideas. Of course, dur­ing the process, there would be some changes due to my per­son­al­i­ty – usu­al­ly those are moments where there is no dia­logue. Seo-kyeong also said that Seo-rae is a per­son who has a dra­mat­ic past and keeps things in her heart, and would not express them, you can’t even tell from her face. It’s a very spe­cial perspective.

How did Park help to sculpt your per­for­mance? This is a film about fine details and ges­tures: how does he make sure he’s get­ting what he needs? Does he do a lot of takes?

The biggest help Direc­tor Park gave me to sculpt my per­for­mance was his con­tin­u­ous encour­age­ment and his help espe­cial­ly on the lan­guage. He would record all the Kore­an lines relat­ed to my role – includ­ing the lines of the co-star – care­ful­ly, sen­tence by sen­tence. For some sen­tences, he would even record sev­er­al ver­sions. As an aside, I should add that Direc­tor Park is a great actor. After we fin­ished one of the pro­mo­tion events, I just had to ask him if he had ever act­ed. He said no, nev­er! And he told me that he had nev­er record­ed audios for some­one so care­ful­ly and assist­ed oth­er peo­ple in dub­bing – all of those were new expe­ri­ences for him. He taught me the Kore­an pro­nun­ci­a­tion like teach­ing a baby to walk, with a lot of ten­der­ness, care, con­sid­er­a­tion, sup­port and patience. It is the great­est help I have ever received.

Direc­tor Park is also a good lis­ten­er and is very flex­i­ble. Anoth­er thing that helped me a lot was his sto­ry­boards. It’s the most beau­ti­ful ​‘con­ti’ art I’ve ever seen. I think it’s com­pa­ra­ble to my favourite Japan­ese comics when I was a child. It’s sig­nif­i­cant that the direc­tor strict­ly fol­lowed this for the shoot, which is why it was com­plet­ed so effi­cient­ly. It made the atmos­phere dur­ing shoot­ing relax­ing and pleas­ant, but also cre­at­ed a com­fort­able ten­sion. Of course, the direc­tor would do var­i­ous takes if he felt it nec­es­sary, but he wouldn’t do that if he had what he want­ed. He’s very clear about what he wants and would not tor­ture the actors nor inter­fere with their per­for­mance too much. He would just chat with us and re-do the shot.

How much time did you spend with Park Hae-il before shoot­ing? Was there any time before the shoot that you were able to dis­cuss the arc of your rela­tion­ship in the film?

I didn’t count how much time we spent togeth­er. As I said before, we would go for a walk when­ev­er we had time, either I invit­ed him, or some­times he invit­ed me. But we couldn’t com­mu­ni­cate well due to the lan­guage bar­ri­er. So it’s more like we were com­mu­ni­cat­ing intu­itive­ly. Occa­sion­al­ly, we would use the trans­la­tion device as used in the film to chat a bit, but it’s quite tir­ing and we even­tu­al­ly gave up. But grad­u­al­ly we found that we didn’t need the chat and we could reach a lev­el of non-ver­bal, even spir­i­tu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Think about ani­mals: they would not say things like, ​‘Hey, which year were you born? Which star sign are you? Where do you come from?’ They prob­a­bly com­mu­ni­cate more via eye con­tact, facial expres­sion and body lan­guage. And attach­ment devel­oped like that is there­fore pure.