The lives of a lot of silent film stars were tragic and short. Few, however, had the kind of extreme trajectory that Ruan Lingyu did: one of China’s top attractions at 21; dead by suicide at 24, after a career of only nine years. She lived a very public life. However, the question of what Ruan’s death meant to Chinese filmgoers is not an important one in Center Stage, director Stanley Kwan’s 1992 biopic of the screen legend, starring Maggie Cheung. What really matters, in this film, is what her death meant to her.
