Summary: Told on an epic scale, this big-budget spectacle recounts the tempestuous relationship between two Peking Opera stars as they live through five decades of turbulent Chinese history. In a repressive 1920s opera school, an androgynous young boy, Dieyi, begins a life-long involvement with another student, Xiaolou. Years later, the two achieve national stardom, best known for their rendition of the tragic opera "Farewell My Concubine," in which the now-adult Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) plays the part of a woman. As their professional lives soar, their relationship becomes strained as the gay Dieyi falls in love with his affectionate but heterosexual co-star. Even after Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) marries a fiery former prostitute (superbly played by Gong Li), the two men's lives remain intractably intertwined. Exotic locations, sweeping photography, colorful costumes and an emotional story line make this a riveting experience
Review:
Having shared the top prize at the Cannes
Film Festival this past spring (with "The Piano"), "Farewell
My Concubine" is a stirring, epic Chinese film that covers more than half
a century in the flamboyant story of two opera stars and their turbulent relationship.
The film opens with a wrap-around device as a pair of former opera superstars meet in an empty Peking stadium in 1977, dressed in full costume and ready to perform. An elderly caretaker recognizes them and turns on the stadium lights. Then, as they approach each other, the film flashes back to 1925 to begin their story.
Farewell My Concubine spans fifty-three
years, presenting the lives of two men against the historical backdrop of a
country in upheaval. Initially banned in China but shown to international acclaim,
Chen Kaige's film is one of the year's true masterpieces. Deserving of its award
at Cannes and of its prominent position in 1993's New York Film Festival, Farewell
My Concubine is a motion picture experience that few will soon forget after
leaving the theater.
"Farewell My Concubine" is two films at once: An epic spanning
a halfcentury of modern Chinese history, and a melodrama about life backstage
at the famed Peking Opera. The idea of viewing modern China through the eyes
of two of the opera's stars would not, at first, seem logical: How could the
birth pangs of a developing nation have much in common with the death pangs
of an ancient and ritualistic art form? And yet the film flows with such urgency
that all its connections eem logical. And it is filmed with such visual splendor
that possible objections are swept aside.
Lavish, splendorous. ornate -- these and
other overdressed adjectives belong to "Farewell My Concubine," the
Chinese movie that took the top prize at Cannes this year. (Actually, it shared
the honor with Jane Campion's "The Piano.") A lengthy costume spectacle
about two Peking Opera stars, it's also a political melodrama, an updated fable
about unconditional love; and with its coyly veiled homosexual themes, a tweaking
test for the freedom-phobic Beijing regime.
1993 has been quite a year for films with
Chinese and Chinese-American themes. THE WEDDING BANQUET has received tremendous
critical praise; M. BUTTERFLY brought a Tony Award-winning play to the screen;
THE JOY LUCK CLUB has been playing to full houses and seems a lock for many
major award nominations. Now comes Cannes Film Festival Palme D'Or co-winner
FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE, and it becomes clear that everything else was just a
warm-up. Director Chen Kaige has fashioned a drama mesmerizing from first frame
to last, and does so without getting artsy or obscure. This is a remarkably
accessible epic, and the best film of this year in any language.
Farewell My Concubine: History, Melodrama,
and Ideology in Contemporary Pan-Chinese Cinema
by Jenny Kwok Wah Lau
Excerpt: "Judging from the general response in the West, Concubine is considered Chen's masterpiece. In fact, it seems that a trend of acceptance of Chen's films, where criticism lapses into a celebration of excellent art, is well on its way. I, however, view Chen's works with mixed feelings; Concubine may well be the decisive film of his career but for reasons that are beyond artistic considerations."
National Trauma, Global Allegory: reconstruction
of collective memory in Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Blue Kite
by Xudong Zhang
Abstract: "In this paper the author examines the ideological use of history in ‘International Film Festival Films’ from Mainland China in the early 1990s. The author observes that films like Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, Tian Zhuangzhuang’s The Blue Kite, and Zhang Yimou’s To Live all share the post-revolutionary assumption and seek to deconstruct the ‘grand-narrative’ of social revolution and idealism by constructing a counter-narrative of national trauma and traumatized individual life. By analyzing the filmic text of The Blue Kite, the author argues that, instead of exploring the complexity of social change and everyday life of the Chinese twentieth century, the former Fifth Generation auteurs resorted to a visual ontology or mythology of the present, which in turn invents its past as a melodrama of ‘human nature’ or ‘art as such’. The reason why moments of those films remain compelling, as the author argues, is not because of the new metaphysics and ahistorical conclusions at the superficial level, but lies in the fact that the visual and narrative logic of the ‘new cinematic language’ (as a result of the aesthetic–political upheaval of the Chinese 1980s) resists the formula of ‘healing’ and captures the irreducible complexity of a world of life (i.e. Mao’s China) despite the ideological tendency of the global 1990s."
The Wooden Man's Bride.; Farewell My Concubine.;
The Blue Kite.; To Live.
by Zhiwei Xiao
Excerpt: "International attention has been brought to Chinese cinema primarily through the films of a group of elite directors referred to in China as "The Fifth Generation." Directors such as Chen Kaige, Huang Jianxin, Tian Zhuangzhuang, and Zhang Yimou have been called, variously, "xianfeng daoyan" (vanguard director), "zheli daoyan" (philosophical director), or "yishu dianying daoyan" (art film director). These terms of designation suggest the distance and difference between their works and those of mainstream popular film production in China."
Actor/Actress Info: