Mabel Cheung Yuen-Ting's An Autumn's Tale

5. A Tale of Two Cities: New York in An Autumn's Tale

A Tale of Two Cities: New York in An Autumn's Tale AnAutumn 台 Tale takes us to a New York City that is, in the same instance, both familiar and foreign. On the familiarity front, audiences “know" certain New York City landmarks that appear in the film, such as the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, Battery Park, and Times Square. Cheung uses New York City landmarks, neighborhoods, modes of transport, and various urban spaces to move the plot forward and to illustrate how New York gradually becomes home for Jenny. This chapter argues that through the devices of narrative, style, and mise-en-scène, An Au的mn 台 Tale engages the space of the city, as well as processes of border crossing in very deliberate - and familiar - ways. Audiences who see the film are reminded of other classic “American" books, plays, and films about newcomers trying to survive in New York. AnAutumn 台 Tale is in conversation with other popular American movies made in and about the Big Apple. As a result, it addresses larger connections between cinema and urban space. Here again, we see links between film and transnational American studies as diill!liliii MABEL CHEUNG YUEN.TING'S AN AUTUMN'S TALE we note the way that New York is claimed as a familiar space by people from all over the world. Manhattan is and has been a seemingly irresistible location for stories about the quest for upward mobility and achieving the American dream. New York is the setting for mid-20th century Broadway musicals turned cinema blockbusters such as West Side Story and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Although these productions promote the possibilities for success in America with tongue in cheek, they still strike a hopeful chord. Films about “making it" in the “city that never sleeps" have been standard fare for nearly a century and they experienced a resurgence of popularity during the late 1980s. In 1987, the same year An Autumn 台 Tale was released; Oliver Stone's Wall Street featured Michael Douglas as inside trader Gordon Gecko declaring “Greed is good." Like Wall st.月e" the 1方eBol?，βreof的e Vanities (1990) both lampooned and seduced audiences with its depiction of life among Manhattan's financial elite. Although the story of the business tycoon in Manhattan is a well-worn male narrative, there is a 1980s female equivalent - the tale of the upwardly mobile single woman. In this sense, AnAutumn 台 Tale shares common ground with the Mike Nichols film Working Gzrl, starring Melanie Grif自由， Sigourney Weaver, and Harrison Ford. Like An Autumn 云 Tale and Wall Street, it too was released in the late 1980s. Working GzTl (1988) follows the fortunes of the young, perky, and independent (hereafter YPI) Tess McGill seeking success (and romance) in the big city. The fascination with YPI women “taking Manhattan" has not waned in the 21st-century and there seems to be a global market for stories of this sort. Films such as Miss Congeniality, Maid in Manhattan, 13 Going on 30 and most recently, TI日e DevlÏ Wears Prada, continue to celebrate the YPI type, as do the ever-popular (globally distributed) re-runs of Sex in 的e City and Friends. Even reality television shows such as America 台 Next Top Model and The A TALE OF TWO (ITIE5 "，111紋。 Apprentice - among the hottest DVDs for sa1e in Shenzhen, China - reprise the theme. Cherie Chung's character Jenny in AnAutumn 台 Tale fits quite easily into the spunky sisterhood constituted by the women featured in the aforementioned films. J enny is bright, idea1istic, attractive, and willing to work hard despite the challenges the city presents. However, what separates Chung's Jenny from Meg Ryan's Sally, Me1anie Griffith's Tess, or Anne Hathaway's Andy, is that An Au的mn 台 Tale， 1ike the fi1m's Chinese tit1e Oiterally “An Autumn's Fairy Ta1e") is a fantasy about 1ife in New York for the young Chinese woman in diaspora. Jenny's quest is to find success and happiness in the city without 10sing her connection to her Hong Kong home or her Chinese-ness. This is a theme invoked in many Hong Kong fi1ms made in the 1980s and 1990s but Mabe1 Cheung Yuen-ting claims the space of New York City in An Autumn 台 Tale for diasporic women in a more Hollywood-1ike manner. As a romantic fantasy, the story unfo1ds in a...