Why the 1960 film The Wild, Wild Rose is the late Grace Chang’s greatest cinematic triumph

Grace Chang, also known by her stage name Ge Lan, died in August at the age of 93. She is widely remembered today for her lively performance in Mambo Girl, the 1957 Chinese-language musical that made her a star. Famed for pure roles expressing the aspirations of would-be middle-class Hong Kong girls, Chang initially played characters who were hip, popular, socially adept, conscientious and relatively well-off, possessing no hint of sexuality; her character in Mambo Girl is almost...