Fan Bingbing Shows Off "Face Mask" at "One Night Surprise" Event

Sophie's Revenge director Eva Jin and mega-star Fan Bingbing unveiled their new romantic comedy, One Night Surprise (Yi Ye Jing Xi), at an event in Beijing Wednesday.

After Fan had complained on set that the long days and nights of shooting were taking a toll on her skin, Jin presented her with a giant cosmetic face mask, which she hoped would both give Fan "face" and thank her for her hard work on the film.

One Night Surprise, set for an August release, is written and directed by Beijing-based Jin, whose previous outing made her the first female director in China to cross the coveted RMB 100 million mark for domestic box office receipts. That film starred Fan and Zhang Ziyi.

The film follows Fan, a white-collar manager who has succeeded in business but not in love, through her encounters with three handsome men: Daniel Henney, Arif Rahman (Li Zhiting), and Jiang Jingfu. Although the film is Fan's second comedy with Jin, it's not her usual fare. "I'm only going to do comedies if they're Jin's," she said, saying that the director understands women and knows how to write for them.

Fan's star continues to rise, with One Night Surprise giving her a relatively rare opportunity to be the film's lead, not just its lead actress. She was recently named China's top celebrity in a Forbes magazine list, and The Hollywood Reporter honored her as their International Artist of the Year at last month's Cannes Film Festival. Fan recently shot scenes for X-Men: Days of Future Past, in which she appears as Blink, and is set to star in the next Jackie Chan film. Still, she's best known for her indie turn in Lost in Beijing, in which she plays a foot massage attendant abused by the store's owner.

"The romantic comedy is well developed in Hollywood but not here, I want to bring that to China," Jin said. "We don't have many genre films at all -- horror, thrillers, detective stories, teenage movies. I feel like the industry only really started [branching out] since 2009," Jin told the Beijinger in an interview after the event.

Jin believes that dearth of diversity gives her films appeal to Fan. "She's very talented, and she's desperately looking for different genre material and specifically for lead female roles."

Jin believes that actresses in China are still limited by the material that is offered them to play. "When there are no great characters, they can't really unleash themselves. For female actors especially, this helps them," she said.

Describing whether she chose her male leads based on looks or talent, Jin said, "There are so many movies for men in China, I just want to make movies to make women happy."

(All photos Steven Schwankert/thebeijinger.com).