The old master of a powerful family in 1920's China supports three wives. Each has her own house within the closed world of the family compound, where every evening a red lantern is lit in front of the door of the wife with whom the master chooses to sleep. Let the rivalries begin.
When a beautiful young woman is selected to serve as concubine to an affluent man, she sadly accepts -- knowing that she has no other alternative to survive financially. Her fate, however, turns from bad to worse when her master's other wives, all older and not as attractive, callously alienate the newcomer due to their sexual jealousy.
Co-produced by Era International (Hong Kong), Salon Film (Hong Kong) and China Film.
Additional cast: Ma Jingwu, He Caifei, Qao Quifen and Jin Shuyan.
Review 1:
"...A beautifully crafted and richly detailed feat....[Gong] reveals unexpected sharpness as well as great depths of dignity and sorrow..."
Source: New York Times
p.C18 03/20/1992
Review 2:
"...A dazzling dynastic melodrama....Presented with a precise and lustrous pictorial beauty unseen in Eastern cinema since KAGEMUSHA..."
Source: Film Comment
p.42-4 11/01/1991
Review 3:
"...As slow, quiet and ritualized as the life it depicts....Zhang revels in the beauty of his actresses..."
Source: Entertainment Weekly
p.34 05/01/1992
Review 4:
"...A film of astonishing beauty and terror that has the impact of a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy..."
Source: Los Angeles Times
p.F14 03/13/1992
Review 5:
4 stars out of 4 -- "The use of color is exquisite, sensual and as imaginative as Zhang's framing of shots."
Source: USA Today
p.11D 08/03/2007
Review 6:
"...Gong Li delivers a performance of exquisite expressiveness that, like the film itself, is unnerving in its emotional nakedness..."
Source: Rolling Stone
p.102 03/19/1992
Review 7:
"...A Chinese film of voluptuous physical beauty and angry passions..."
Source: Chicago Sun-Times
p.41 03/27/1992
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