Gong Li and Kelly Chen rep Swiss watches

Gong Li is the brand ambassador for the new Piaget Limelight Gala collection of expensive watches that, according to a breathless company announcement, represents the 1960s "which were known as a golden age pervaded by a resolutely fanciful spirit." Som of us remember the 1960s as a time of civil rights demonstrations, radical political campaigns and the war in Vietnam but that probably won't sell many diamond encrusted watches.

Over the past five years China has rewarded luxury goods manufacturers with a presence there with double digit annual growth. Philippe Leopold Metzger, CEO of Piaget, is not one to miss a sure thing. Here he slips a few hundred thousand dollars worth on diamonds onto Gong Li's wrist.

The creative director for the campaign decided that the best way to present Gong Li was as a photoshopped image that was barely recognizable:

Meanwhile Kelly Chen put on a pink dress and slapped a decal on her arm from Ernest Borel, a Swiss watchmaker that targets a larger and less wealthy slice of the market:

She joined a few hundred guests of the sponsor and a photo crew for a quick shipboard photo opportunity. Leaning against a rail she was her usual serene self, looking as placid as the sea.

Piaget; Xinhua; Ernest Borel; Sina

Kelly Chen has a new album

Kelly Chen had a press conference last month to hype "Reflections", an album that was released earlier this month. She also brought out a couple of music videos. All of that activity somehow slipped through our fine-meshed seine that usually nets  everything concerning  female artists connected to the Hong Kong and PRC movie biz, however tangentially.

Here is some of what we missed...

Anyone that is a movie or recording star (or both), no matter how talented she is and how hard she works, still must present a manufactured image to the public since we identify with performers through their roles and what they produce. When Kelly Chen works a carefully staged publicity event, acting interested in what the press are asking and sincere in her respect for them and does so with a huge image of herself looming over her it makes this even more clear; an image appearing in front of an image.

She seems to enjoy being in front of a crowd, whether a bunch of journos and flacks in a ballroom in Hong Kong or thousands of screaming fans in Taipei or Kuala Lumpur:

Make-up for one of the music videos promoting a single that may be called "Skin Trauma". It probably made a lot more sense before going through the automatic translation word chopper.

 

And the result:

 An image from the music video for "So Hot":

And the video itself--it goes without saying--although I will say it--that she can really move; an excellent dancer in the context of a music video.

Sina Yahoo China MSN Singapore

Kelly Chan Wai-Lam runs the gamut of her expressions from A to ...

Kelly Chan was touting the release of her new album and posing for pictures, showing her range from "blank look" to "dull surprise".

Blank and beautiful:

Showing emotion while holding what look like personal defense devices--chemical MACE or pepper spray:

She remains, of course, gorgeous, talented and wealthy.

Sina

Speaking of hot mommas--Kelly Chen for children's brand

Kelly Chen is outrageously beautiful, never more so than in these quick offhand poses with a goofy mascot for the "green moth Prince" a brand she is repping. She announced she is three months pregnant and was wearing an intriguing maternity dress that looked like a shower curtain with an Empire waist. A few hundred years ago men would fight duels over someone as gorgeous as Kelly Chen--or in hyper-romantic late 18th and early 19th century Germany, shoot themselves.

More pictures at Sina

Meanwhile, back in Hong Kong...Kelly Chen for TSE

Kelly Chen wowed the pumps and pearls crowd at an appearance for the luxury cashmere knitwear brand TSE.

Thinking about the fat check she will get for standing around for an hour.

Xinhua

Kelly Chen wears a watch and a blue dress

The Oriental Watch Company threw a party for themselves celebrating something involving the number 50. The organizers were smart enough to pay Kelly Chen to show up which resulted in a lot more coverage then most industrial/commercial events get.
She knows how to make an entrance

And is pretty good at standing around as well.

Nice corsage

The Google translated cutline on the Ifeng story was "Kelly appeared high X-skirt show beautiful slender legs" which summed up things pretty well.

Zhou Xun, Kelly Chen in the front row at opening of Chanel botique

Zhou Xun can make almost any fashion choice look perfect--as she does here with a two piece jacket in the classic Chanel quilted pattern--and Kelly Chen is, of course, Kelly Chen. They are sharing the front row of the Chanel show with some guy in a shiny suit.

Sina; Sohu

Kelly Chen looking gorgeous for Moiselle

Kelly Chen appeared in Hong Kong for Moiselle, at their Fall/Winter 2012 show which is as good a reason for such luxury brands to exist as any. Here she is, doing what she does best.

Xinhua

Kelly Chen in "Lost and Found"

Kelly Chan Wai-Lam was the perfect actress to play Lam, the lead in Lost and Found and it was the perfect movie for an actress of her looks, talent and emotional range. Lost and Found hits the audience with successive waves of pathos and bathos, each more fierce than the last, demanding that we succumb to its "Love means never having to say you are an actress" gestalt. Which is not to say it is a bad movie--it is a very good three handkerchief weeper that charts the life and loves of a sublimely lovely woman who is stricken with cancer and who gets more beautiful as the disease progresses. Add the gorgeous Kaneshiro Takeshi fighting back tears, a child bravely mourning her mother and an all but homeless (although still cute, clean and funny) family of kids trying to stay together and only the hardest heart will keep from breaking.

Kelly Chan's narrow emotional compass and lack of connection with the other actors in the movie serve her well. Lam would be present physically to her friends and family but her mind/soul/spirit is busy as a subject of the Kingdom of Cancer so Chan's lack of affect is exactly what is called for.

First and most importantly she plays a person dying in the hospital:

Still dying and not happy about it:

And dying some more:

But it isn't all wasting away against the dark peach sheets of the hospital. What she does best as a ravishingly beautiful performer is simply look at the camera:

But part of shooting a movie with Kelly Chan is to make sure she varies her expression to the extent she can, something which director Lee Chi-Ngai didn't do. Here she is with Kaneshiro Takeshi. He looks shocked and surprised while she looks like she (almost) always does:

There is a shot of her eavesdropping on a tragic phone conversation:

And another of her on the craggy, wind-swept highlands of Scotland where she has gone in search of what she thinks is her true love (but we know it isn't, since it is Michael Wong):

In case the audience hasn't surrendered after watching Kaneshiro Takeshi stay dewy-eyed and noble for the entire movie (he has eyes that rival Bambi's for expressiveness) Lee, who wrote and produced Lost and Found as well as directing it, brings out the biggest of big guns at the end. Lam, still as exquisite and inexpressive as she was when she was alive, gets to observe her own funeral and see how her life and death have brought together those who knew her:

What works best, though, is exactly why this movie was cast the way it was--the face that may not have launched a thousand ships but has sold a lot of tickets: