Film acting as cultural practice and transnational vehicle: Tang Wei’s minimalist performance inLate Autumn(2011)

The central question of this article is: how can a non-Hollywoodized acting style break national and cultural boundaries to become transnational? By a close analysis of Chinese actress Tang Wei’s award-winning performance in the South Korean film Late Autumn, this article argues that Tang’s unspoken and minimalist acting style is deep-rooted in East Asian cultural and aesthetic traditions, and can be understood as a distinctive cultural practice. It tries to challenge some critical clichés in the Hollywood-centred discussion of transnational film acting, including that the Hollywood realistic acting is the norm against which acting in other cultural contexts should be evaluated; and that a good command of English is fundamental to transnational performance.