COMMENTARY

Foreign movie stars, handlers in tow, seem to be showing up in China at an acceler-ating rate to roll the cameras. The recent craze, of course, was the arrival in Shanghai of screen icon Tom Cruise and co-stars to film the third installment in his increasingly over-the-top "Mission: Impossible" action series. The shooting began in the old-fashioned and picturesque water town of Xitang, Zhejiang province - where there is sure to be a chase through an old-style Chinese market, continu-ing down an otherwise peaceful old canal on jet skis - and will culminate with a climactic motorcycle chase sequence on the Bund in Shanghai. That last scenario was not made up - that's really how the movie will end.

But Cruise's movie - he is also the film's producer - is only the latest in a series of non-Chinese film productions, Hollywood and otherwise, opting to come to the mainland to shoot. Other recent movies to be filmed in China include "The Painted Veil", a 19th cen-tury period picture starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, the World War II Pacific The-ater movie "The Great Raid", and "The White Countess", featuring Ralph Fiennes as a blind American diplomat in 1930s Shanghai. Not to mention other upcoming titles like "Shanghai Red" and "The Shanghai Kid", all to be filmed here in the PRC.

It used to be the rule in Hollywood that scenes set in China were shot on studio back lots in southern California (or was Indiana Jones really outrunning bad guys with his pint-sized Chinese chauffeur on Nanjing Road in the beginning of 1984's "Temple of Doom"? I don't think so), while early exceptions included Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor" and Stephen Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun", both released in 1987. Hardly any foreign productions set foot on the mainland during the '90s, not counting Richard Gere's semi-controversial (and mostly dreadful) 1997 film "Red Corner", which filmed some exterior scenes in Beijing.

In the 21st century however, the exceptions have, quite visibly, become the rule. A handful of foreign movies were filmed on the mainland in 2005, and more are set to come in 2006. This is primarily because the rules for market access are being relaxed, making it possible for foreign stu-dios to come to China, set up joint ventures with local film companies, hire skilled but affordable Chinese crews, use local actors (not to mention eager expats willing to work as extras), and make their movie for cheap.

How cheap? "The White Countess", directed by James Ivory of the venerable Merchant Ivory duo, was shot entirely in Shanghai for a total budget of about US$16 million - a song by Hollywood standards. Scenes from both of Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" mov-ies - despite some of them taking place in Tokyo - were filmed in and just outside Beijing in 2002 with a local crew, saving enough money to relax pressure on the budget and allow the project to expand into a two-part series. One Beijing-based consultant for a Hollywood studio estimated the cost of making a film in China at a quarter of what it would take in the US. That may be an exaggerated figure, but the savings are surely considerable.

What will they think?

Period pictures about the trials of foreigners in romanticized pre-war China and action flicks with little grounding in reality are fine ways to pass an evening, but where is the China of the present (and future) in all of this? The word "China" surely conjures up many different im-ages in the collective imagination of the international film-going pub-lic, but a rapidly developing and fully modern metropolis likely isn't one of them, at least not as a background against which their screen idols embrace or do battle. On the other hand, with the success of recent big-budget Chinese films abroad, coupled with enormous in-ternational attention focused in this direction and no sign of decline in the near future, maybe audiences are primed for a love affair with Chinese-set films similar to 2003's crush on movies set in Japan.

And what about Chinese audiences? Young Chinese love watch-ing movies - even if they don't love paying full admission - and, despite domestic films' increasing production values and global renown, foreign films still carry a lot of weight for them. But many complain, understandably so, about the sometimes laughable mis-conceptions about China they see on their pirated DVDs.

If - and this is a big IF - Hollywood and other foreign film pro-ductions can begin to show China as a modernizing, invigorated, exciting place to be, that recognition would be a big confidence boost for the younger generation. A positive sign: Chinese movie villains - typically anachronistically uniformed cadres - seem to be dwindling in supply. Witness 2004's remake of 1962's paranoid thriller "The Manchurian Candidate" - the Chinese bad guys of the original became evil corporate types.

Of course, stereotypes will persist in film - they are practically Hollywood's bread and butter. The real question is: will China, the place, become a bankable presence in foreign movies - a character in its own right rather than just an anonymously exotic backdrop? If that can happen, we will truly have come a long way.

If the past is any indicator, be prepared to bump into more in-ternational household names in China's photogenic cities in the future. The stars have heard about the nightlife and will want to see what the fuss is about, movie studio execs won't be able to resist the low cost of filming or the efficiency of Chinese crews, and movie audiences may eventually realize that there is more to China than just the Forbidden City, martial arts, and peasants in the countryside, and they'll demand to see more of it.