He's A Woman, She's A Man (1994, Hong Kong)

A film set in the Chinese entertainment industry; a woman poses as a young man to get a part.

A famous film and music producer, Sam Koo (Leslie Cheung), has an argument with Rose (Carina Lau), his girlfriend and favoured singer, and he sets out to prove that he can make an ordinary person into a music industry success. He announces a huge audition, for male singers. A young woman, Wing (Anita Yuen), is keen to meet Sam, whom she idolises, so she disguises herself as a young man and goes to the audition, and amazingly, she is picked as the lucky one.

Sam and Wing are now in close contact, and Sam is disturbed to discover that he has sexual feelings for Wing, not realising (yet) that she is a girl.

This is a difficult film to follow because of poor editing, and very poor picture quality and often illegible subtitles. The gender disguise issue is fairly crudely done too. However it was immensely successful at the time of its release.

The film is often quoted as being a Chinese version of Victor/Victoria, but there is no reverse gender disguise. (In Victor/Victoria, the main character is a woman pretending to be a man who does a theatrical female impersonation act.) This film is more like a female-to-male Tootsie in theme, although there is little subtlety in the exploration of the gender differences.

The original title of the film is Gam chi yuk sip.

HF January 2011

This Page: He's a Woman, She's a Man Return to Alphabetical Index Page Return to Home Page

Hazel Freeman's International Transgender Film Guide is maintained by

Jenni Olson

and hosted at

Visitors from the US and Canada can help support this site by shopping for LGBT DVDs using this WolfeVideo.com affiliate link. The commission we earn from your purchases will directly support the continued existence of this website. Thank you!