It’s always a little difficult to do an interview when there is a translator in the room. Not only due to the language barrier, but due to spending half your time waiting for the translator to repeat your question back to the person you’re interviewing. So if you’re given twenty minutes, it’s really more like ten.

Thankfully Gong Li had plenty of time to talk about her newest work which is about to open here in the states, Curse of the Golden Flower.

Curse is not your typical Asian export. Most of the Asian films that appear stateside are usually more action oriented, and while this film has plenty of that, it’s more focused on the inner workings of an imperial family and what’s really going on behind the scenes. Chow Yun Fat plays the Emperor and Gong Li plays his wife, the Empress.

The film spends a great deal of time showing things that we normally don’t get to see in an “action film” like how the emperors palace really worked and something which I found fascinating to view - the unbelievable opulence that the rulers had all around them in their daily lives. The film really does an amazing job of capturing the lifestyle of the leaders in the Tang Dynasty of 10^th Century China. And while I could go on and on about the visuals and costumes I would just recommend you watch the trailer so you can see what I’m talking about. They’re on the level of Lord of the Rings.

While the interview was done in roundtable form, there were only four of us and everyone asked great questions.

While I normally recommend downloading the audio of an interview, in this case you might want to just read the transcript as I didn’t cut out the Chinese that is spoken back and forth. But if you can speak Chinese, you’ll really love the download. If you want to listen to Gong Li then click here, otherwise here is the interview.

And remember Curse of the Golden Flower opens this Friday.

The elegance of the environment of this film is overpowering to a viewer. I realize when you’re making a movie, its illusion, but was there a sense that you were in all of that elegant surrounding that you could actually feel like the Empress?

Yes, definitely I felt like an Empress in charge of everything. The whole country all the people, everything belonged to me as the Empress. This was a result of the setting and the sets and everything put together as well as the effort that the director did put in to make it all happen.

What about the clothing? It looks so heavy and yet at the same time it's very revealing. A lot of cleavage with that kind of stuff. What was it like to walk around like that?

Yes, definitely. That kind of costume was very carefully crafted. It was all hand-made with all sorts of pieces and extra fabric and design details, so it was very heavy to wear. But it's a kind interesting effect because like you said the inner layers were very tight and very constraining and yet the outside layers were very full and flowing and just kind of free and easy. It was a very beautiful effect. This was certainly the effect that was true to the Tung Dynasty style dress back 1,000 years ago.

What about working again with director Zhang Yimou? I suppose it's been 10 years since you've worked together. Was it like getting back on a bike? Was it easy to jump right back in? How have you changed as an actress and how has he changed as a director?

Well, it doesn't feel like that much time has passed. It felt like just a couple of years almost like yesterday since the last time we worked together. Then of course when we thought about it we said the last time I made a film with Zhang Yimou was about 10 years ago. It seems so far away. But in fact this time getting back together to work with him was a great experience. We felt very comfortable immediately. We had a very fine rapport working with each other. A lot of things were easy to communicate. So it really worked out very nicely.

I'm curious about the sets and how extravagant and everything that was involved with the locations. How is that as an actor working in those kinds of environments? Could you talk a little bit about...is it easier for you?

Yes, it's true. That kind of set, although it was very opulent, everything is colorful, brightly colored especially in gold with these huge columns and everything. At the same time we felt a lot of pressures almost kind of oppressively luxurious environment. So sometimes you feel stifled and felt like I have to go outside and take a walk, but of course if you did that you'd discover yourself in the middle of the palace even if it's an open space there's still a big palace with the same kind of opulence and oppressive atmosphere attached to it. So I think it was very suitable for this story and for the kind of situation this Empress was in.

Emotion was so heightened in the film. I'm just wondering is it a more difficult role to perform when the emotions are so high?

Yes, this is one of the challenges that interested me about accepting this role is the fact it's a very concentrated story. The whole thing takes place in a small space in about 48 hours of story time so this means that the kind of mood and the emotions are often very intense and they're concentrated, crystallized and you have to find a way to really be on 100% or even more each time to really express things in a very intense form. It's kind of like a bull fight where they fight the bull, they stir up the bull and excite the bull until the bull is going crazy and it's kind of that feeling when you're playing this role. Each scene is more and more like that and by the end you think maybe you're going to go crazy, too.

Perhaps in relation to that, you probably heard the story described as Shakespearian, that sort of very big drama involving people going after power. One thought that comes to my mind when I hear about that description is things don't change. Shakespeare is so powerful because the stories we keep repeating, we keep repeating those stories. What does this story of this royal family 1,000 years ago say to people today? What is its relevance?

Well, as an example or maybe even as a kind of example the story of how people are hungry for power, even people who already have a lot of power. Once you get power you want more and more, so they'll do anything and they end up doing all sorts of bad things. This is something that I think anybody can understand.

How do you feel about...you were there in the beginning of the 5th generation of filmmakers after Mao. How are you with the direction of Chinese cinema since then?

I know in the 80's we saw stories that seemed to take place more in the 20th century, more recent times. In the past 10 years it seems exclusively traditional Chinese. Is that a creative choice? Is there pressure from the market? Pressure from the people who finance movies in China to move in that direction?

I think the one thing that been happening is that the directors in China now are paying more attention to commercial considerations. They think about things like box office appeal and what kind of audiences might be interested in seeing what kinds of films. I think this can be a good thing in bringing the films closer to the audiences. On the other hand, it could be a bad thing in that some directors may be setting aside things they really want to do. They might be afraid that some audiences may not want to see this or be able to understand such things. So for example, recently a lot of people are getting back into martial arts films. It seems like quite a trend. Almost like if you don't make a martial arts film you're going against the trend. I, myself, don't think that's such a great idea. So with martial arts films you think the stories are probably set in some historical past but they don't have guns or whatever to fight with, and so in terms of the regulation system in China you have to have the script approved first, so if you set the story in the historical past it might actually be easier to get the script approved in advance. Just go ahead and make the film. So it actually serves this purpose as well as the other purpose of maybe producing a film that will be appealing internationally because it’s a martial arts film. I think it's not such a good thing after all.

I'm just curious. You experienced a cultural revolution even though you were a child at the time. Two questions. One, what are your recollections of that period and two, will there be a great Chinese epic surrounding cultural evolution or is it too early for that? Is that something you can get past the approval board?

At the time, of course, I just started elementary school so I didn't really understand much about big things like the Cultural Revolution. To me it was just, it just so happened I didn't have to go to school because at that time the whole education system stopped. It seemed like a great time, we had a lot of fun, didn't have to go to class or anything. Eventually things started up again and back to school. In the end it didn't seem like such a great thing. We realized it was a bad thing for education to stop and the whole event of the Cultural Revolution. In so far as the 2nd question goes making a film about the Cultural Revolution, right now it may be difficult to get the script approved.

Do you enjoy the anonymity that goes along with being in America?

She doesn't really care; she just goes out on the street at home.

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