I went into The Stunt Woman expecting it to be about a female stunt performer who takes revenge on the criminal element after they, I don't know, sabotage her film or something. That's not really the case. In fact the movie is a rather slow-paced character study--if this is action filmmaking, it's a very strange approach to it.
Michelle Yeoh plays the title character, who lives in a small apartment with an agreeable roommate and finds work as a "stand-in" with a film crew. There is a criminal underworld at play in the periphery of the film, and they do impact the plot somewhere between the second and third act, but that's not really what the movie is about, per se. It's not a behind-the-scenes glimpse at filmmaking, either. More than anything it strives to be a slice-of-life story about the daily trials and tribulations of a tight-knit below-the-line film crew, focusing on Yeoh in particular.
Despite the slow pace and choppy plot (the movie feels like it was adapted from a novel and the screenwriters never quite settled on what to cut out and what to keep in), I found myself becoming engrossed in The Stunt Woman even as it turned out to be something much different than the kinetic action flick I was expecting. The camaraderie between Yeoh and the rest of her crew is endearing and understated: they take care of each other on and off set, develop an easy familiarity that borders on familial, and pass out on each other after a long night of drinking. You can feel the love that director Ann Hui has for her characters, and probably for her cast and crew; in some ways I imagine The Stunt Woman came from the same place that inspired Tarantino's Once Upon a Time In Hollywood.
The only major downside for me was the cartoonish crime boss villain who shows up two-thirds of the way through. His performance is straight out of a Jackie Chan movie, or something like Kung Fu Hustle. It's out of place in a low-key, quietly observed movie like this.
