Cross dressing is a fairly common phenomenon in Chinese movies. It is both a sign of maturity and immaturity for Chinese movies and TV industry. Chinese culture is conservative in nature especially in the past. Men are considered as immoral if they watch entertainment by women and vice versa. In order to be allowed to have some form of entertainment, male audience watched theatre where actors are men and female audience watched theatre where actors are women. In addition, It was hardly acceptable for men to hold hands but alright for women to hold hands. If the actor and actress hold hands in a movie, they are subject to rumours about their morales as long as they are not married to each other. In the past, due to this morality viewpoints, you end up with movies where both the romantic lead roles are handled by actresses. This was true until 1980s. The 1990s brought about a new perspective as the cross dressing roles did not require romance to be part of the storyline plus it also shows the pulling power of the lead actresses.
Another perspective would be to focus on the character's objective. The strong masculine tone in Peking Opera Blues and Flag of Honour would be to focus on patriotism instead of romance.
A more common perspective would be to contrast the attractiveness of the leading male actor. In Handsome Siblings, Andy Lau's role is more attractive because he can convert a feminist to a very feminine role.
Thus, we have this unusual style of gender roles in movies and TV which is more prominent in Chinese Entertainment than in Western, Bollywood or other cultures.
Films that Brigitte starred in which contains cross-dressing