Kwan opened the film with haunting portraits of Fleur applying her make-up and then brought her into the action as a sing-song girl in male drag the mixture of androgyny and ethereal beauty came closer than any role before or after to defining Mui's unique appeal. Her breakthrough role was in Stanley Kwan's Rouge (1987) playing Fleur, a 1930s courtesan who dies in a suicide pact and returns to Hong Kong 50 years later as a ghost, looking for the lover (Leslie Cheung) who has failed to join her in the afterlife. Her gift for comedy was first glimpsed in Alfred Cheung's Let's Make Laugh (1983) and she was lucky enough to be cast opposite Leslie Cheung for the first time in Taylor Wong's crime thriller Behind the Yellow Line (1984), which also won her the Best Supporting Actress nod in the Hong Kong Film Awards. Partly because of her "ugly duckling" looks, her acting career took longer to find a focus. Journalists began comparing her with Madonna in the mid-1980s, largely because of her frequent changes of "image", but the way that her extrovert eccentricities were underpinned by suggestions of melancholy actually brought her a lot closer to Kate Bush territory.
#Paula tsui wind professional
Including compilations and repackaged releases, she sold an estimated 10 million albums across her 20-year professional career. Her fourth album, Bad Girl (1986), remains the best-selling Canto-pop record ever released in Hong Kong (it earned eight platinum discs, getting on for half a million sales) despite the title song's being banned from the radio for its "controversial" lyrics. Her début album, The Crimson Anita Mui (1983), sold a quarter of a million copies, unprecedented success for a newcomer, and she set house records with a 15-night stand at the Hong Kong Coliseum in December 1985 - only to break them with a 30-night run at the same huge venue five years later. Her singing career took off virtually overnight. Despite a regrettable choice of hair style and frock, she won with a cover of Paula Tsui's "Season of the Wind" and was rewarded with a record contract and, less auspiciously, a supporting role in a Zhang Che film, the macho action fantasy Dancing Warrior (1983). In 1982 she took a crucial step towards rebuilding her own future when she entered the first song contest organised by the popular television station TVB. She and her sister Ann were breadwinners before the age of five, singing for pennies in an amusement park soon after the premature death of their father. There were smiles all round as the crowd streamed out of the Compass Ballroom.She was born in 1963 (sources vary as to whether in Hong Kong or mainland China), into an impoverished family of four children. She took requests, launched into Cantonese operatic ditties and cajoled the audience into a mass karaoke session as she sang her hits such as Helpless and On The Road Of Wind And Rain. In her signature polka-dotted gown, Tsui closed her show the way she opened it, with a bang. To show she was no stick in the mud, she even pulled off a catchy Cantonese rap number. There was a segment where Tsui - who cut her teeth as a secondary singer in nightclubs - masterfully belted some classic Mandarin torch songs such as Love's Puzzle and Never Ending Love.
#Paula tsui wind series
If nostalgia was what the audience came for, they got it by the bucket loads.īesides her own numbers such as Going With The Flow, Going Against The Flow and Behind The Wedding Gown, she feted them with theme songs of old Cantonese serials (the rousing Into The Fire Mountain from swordfighiting series Luk Siu Fung) to hits by other Cantopop legends such as Roman Tam and Anita Mui, In between songs, she flirted and bantered with the audience like a congenial and engaging auntie. She cocooned the audience in a cloak of mellowness and hit the big notes with neither strain not theatrics.Īt one stage, she told the audience that although many of her songs smack of the blues, she actually has a good sense of humour. It was hard not to be floored by how effortless her singing was. When she sang of love and loss and yearning, she made those feelings not just personal but resonant. Her voice was more than just distinctive it was emotive. Hearing her sing, one was reminded why she has lasted 45 years in show business. This was followed by her equally big chart-topper The Long Road. Her famous hour-shaped figure sheathed in a shimmering skin-coloured mermaid gown, she got things off to a rousing start with one of her most famous hits, The Windy Season. The crowd roared its approval when she appeared on stage at 8.15pm, her long tresses teased out in exaggerated voluminosity and wearing enough bling to make make any socialite's knees go weak.
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