Banned in mainland China, this is director Zhang Yimou's fourth film, following the highly acclaimed Ju Dou and Red Sorghum, about the oppression of women in his homeland. Visually exciting and wonderfully lyrical but drained completely of any inherent eroticism, it follows the trials and tribulations of the reluctant concubine and fourth wife (Gong Li) of a wealthy industrialist in pre-Communist China of the Twenties. Her life inside her gilded palace is made a misery by the back-biting and insults of the other wives, who are resentful of her youth and beauty. Zhang paints a vivid portrait of a world of extreme emotional coldness and it may be too bleak a picture for all but the director's most ardent fans.

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