Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Wyatt There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

jotix100 Opium is at the center of this story. It shows what it does to the Pang family when the elder son of the clan immerses himself in it. Pang An, a snobbish man, brings Zhongliang, the young brother of Yu Xiuye to the compound to tend to his vice. Ruyi, who is first seen as a young girl, playing with her cousin Duanwu, likes him until Zhongliang falls out of favor and flees to Shanghai.Zhongliang's life in Shanghai goes through a transformation as he becomes part of a gang that extort money from wealthy women who fall in love with members of the gang, who then proceed to extort money from them to keep things quiet.When the old man of the Pang family dies, Pang An is too far gone into his opium to rule. In a surprise movement, Ruyi is made head of the family and she has Duangwu serve as her adviser. The boss of the gang in Shanghai learning about it decides to send Zhongliang to lure Ruyi to their turf. Fate intervenes as Zhongliang falls madly in love with the ravishing Ruyi, who in turn, will discover what the young man was really after and who is instrumental for Ruyi's fall at the end.The film relies on the visual aspects Chen Kaige has brought to the story. This is one of the most daring Chinese films as far as the sexual context that is seen on the screen. Never before has the Chinese cinema shown scenes that burn the screen as when Zhongliang and Ruyi make love.Chen Kaige is a director with a style of his own. He co-wrote the screen play in which this film is based. The action takes place during the first part of the 20th Century in China before the period that changed that country into what it is today.The best asset in the film is the way Chen Kaige sets his story in motion. He surrounds his tale with some of the most dazzling sets in recent memory and the reconstruction of the night life and the criminal around Shanghai in that period is effectively captured in the excellent cinematography by Christopher Doyle. The atmospheric music heard in the background is by Jiping Zhao.The gorgeous Gong Li plays the adult Ruyi and the late Leslie Cheung is Zhonliang. Kevin Liu is seen as Duanwu and Caifei He is Xiuye. The supporting cast add a note of authenticity to the film.This is one of Chen Kaige best achievements as a director.

Zhimin The images are very impressed. The color, the shadow, the depth of field and the framing are excellent. Every individual image is a great picture! Specially in the scene of presenting Ruyi as the master of the family, the soft lens makes Ruyi's white clothes flared, so that it emphasizes her special position in the family as well as her angel image. We often see the sexual victim as woman. As contrary, this movie describes a male victim from the sex abuse of his sister and his brother-in-law. The tragedy goes deeper when this victim destroys the others and himself. In summary, this movie is on my collection list.

cinescot Few film makers capture this history of China from a Chinese production company, unless it is a propaganda piece. Excellent acting by the beautiful and fabulous Gong-Li and Leslie Cheung.Gong Li as Ruyi, falls into the rare, but possible, role of head of the Pang Family, a somewhat traditional family in Shanghai, China; after her older brother falls into opium addiction and her father dies.As a family head, she is almost in the status of a ruling house, and requires a marriage; confidential advisors; and love. By reason of her birth, she is also sheltered froom the world.Still banned, at this writing, from circulation in China; this beautiful story photographed in a nearby Shanghai location; with actual ancestral hall and mansion with garden; transcends the dynasty (as it begins in 1911-12) through two decades of the new Republic. Cheung is a Capo or Dai-Lo of a Shanghai Triad after growing up in the Pang household. Gong-Li lives with the duty a death has given her, after "elders approval" and must cope with her childhood friend & cousin as a lover and trusted adviser; while being courted by the returned from Shanghai Cheung; with whom she falls in love.

YakSmurf When I rented this after reading the pitiful, typically over-sensualized box, I hoped only that it might struggle above tepid mediocrity in some way. In fact, I saw it and despised Leslie Cheung's petty Songlian and his sister Caifei He for the first hour.Yet then I began to realize how intricately woven the characters and plot were as visual symbols began reappearing, and the movie began to happily shirk off introductory pretenses and reveal the forces behind the characters and their actions. Songlian's pettiness began to reveal itself as an intense and justifiable self-hatred, and that of his sister as terrible hopelessness. Meanwhile the others in the movie undergo powerful transformations as well, as we see how people struggle to bring their own beliefs to bear beneath the tidal wave of external circumstances. We see how they fail, and how their failure propogates their weaknesses, undermining others.Overall we see the power of the subversive as it plays on the human mind and heart. We see beliefs destroyed at several levels, we see new beliefs emerge, less pure and more calculating. We see regret unfold in each of the characters, or worse, cold numbness to it from enduring too much.And there is nothing to regret about the movie, except that the subterranean depths of the content make recommendation difficult (this is not a movie for most grandmothers, even though it is still delicate in how it examines its touchier subject matter). Still, it is beautiful in everything it does. The sights, the characters, the transformations, even the twistiness. We rever the characters and their changes, for good or worse because we understand them irrevokably. The movie is highly rich and interwoven. Elements interplay even down to recurring symbols, and by the end we realize that the entire movie is really symbolized in the first ten minutes, even though there is no way we could realize that from the beginning even if told so. Those ten minutes where we see the beautiful Pang estate, and the children, and life so revoltingly innocent at first glance. That is purposeful. What we take for inconsequential initially is proved to be far from it, and really that contrapuntal layering of pretended motive and deeper meaning continues throughout.Every minute in this movie counts. Every side glance reflects meaning. "The Piano" was supposed to be subversive, sensual, touching and powerful, showcasing how the heart must contend with external harshness. However, it is clumsy, ugly, blatant, and ineffectual in comparison to "Temptress Moon" which tells so much more with so much less, and it breaks our heart unspeakably, but is above the painful, selfish bitterness or wallowing found in "Farewell My Concubine", "Raise the Red Lantern", and "Indochine" which really tell stories half as complex (maybe not Indochine). The characters in Temptress Moon are noble, despite and because of their outer twistedness and rent hearts.A sumptuous earring, a swinging lamp, fresh roses, Songlian's longings for Peking, and twisting opium smoke and speeches on its merits and cruelties-- all these symbols snake by at first, yet come to how powerful meaning in the end, and they strike us at many levels in the movie, each time richer with understanding. I left far surprised and impressed. Finally, a movie great enough to express itself in humility of pretenses. If only they'd ditch the stupid and coarsely sensual box.