Yimou Zhang

  • Yimou Zhang – Da hong deng long gao gao gua aka Raise the Red Lantern (1991)

    1991-2000ArthouseChinaDramaYimou Zhang

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    March 20, 1992
    Review/Film; Dissension in the Ranks of a Household’s 4 Wives
    By Janet Maslin, New York Times

    Songlian (Gong Li), the college-educated beauty who arrives at a feudal manor house at the outset of
    Zhang Yimou’s “Raise the Red Lantern,” insists on carrying her own suitcase, which is virtually the
    last act of independence she will be permitted during the course of the story. Forced by her stepmother
    into what is essentially the life of a concubine, Songlian has agreed to become the fourth wife of a
    feudal patriarch, a man so regal that each of his wives presides over her own separate home.Read More »

  • Fengliang Yang & Yimou Zhang – Ju Dou (1990)

    DramaArthouseChinaFengliang YangFifth Generation Chinese CinemaYimou Zhang

    A woman married to the brutal and infertile owner of a dye mill in rural China conceives a boy with her husband’s nephew but is forced to raise her son as her husband’s heir without revealing his parentage in this circular tragedy.Read More »

  • Yimou Zhang – Yao a yao yao dao waipo qiao AKA Shanghai Triad (1995)

    1991-2000ChinaCrimeDramaFifth Generation Chinese CinemaYimou Zhang

    Summary:
    “Country boy Shuisheng (Wang Xiaoxiao) is brought to 1930s Shanghai by his uncle who wants the boy to become a member of the powerful gang ruled by manipulative Tang (Li Baotian). In fact, Shuisheng will serve Tang’s capricious mistress Bijou (Gong Li), a nightclub singer whom the boss proclaimed “the Queen of Shanghai.” When the boy’s uncle and the gang’s several other members die during a rival gang’s unsuccessful attempt on Tang’s life, the latter retreats to a remote small island, taking both Bijou and Shuisheng with him and thinking of revenge.Read More »

  • Yimou Zhang – Gui lai AKA Coming Home (2014)

    2011-2020ChinaDramaFifth Generation Chinese CinemaYimou Zhang

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    Quote:
    The story is adapted from the novel The Criminal Lu Yanshi (simplified Chinese: 陆犯焉识; traditional Chinese: 陸犯焉識) written by Yan Geling. Lu Yanshi had been a professor before being sent to the labour camp (laogai, literally “reform through labor”) during the Cultural Revolution. He escapes from the labour camp in faraway northwest Xining to make his way back to his long-missed wife Feng Wanyu and daughter Dandan. Dandan is a teenage ballerina, and is prevented from playing the lead role due to her father’s outlaw status. So when she stumbles across her father trying to hide in their apartment building to meet her mother, she reveals his presence to the police, and the police are therefore waiting to arrest him when he tries to meet his wife. Lu is captured, his wife is injured in the scuffle, and Dandan is awarded a supporting role in the ballet. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Lu comes home to find his family broken: his wife suffers from amnesia resulting from her injury, and she blames Dandan for having reported her father, and meanwhile Dandan has given up ballet and works in a textile factory.Read More »

  • Yimou Zhang – Qian li zou dan qi AKA Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (2005)

    2001-2010AsianChinaDramaFifth Generation Chinese CinemaYimou Zhang

    A young Japanese film maker is in hospital in Tokyo. His estranged father tries to visit, but the son refuses to see him. So, as a gesture of reconciliation, the father decides to go to China to complete the filming of a Chinese opera, called “Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles,” which the son was working on but unable to finish.Read More »

  • Yimou Zhang – Huozhe AKA To Live (1994)

    1991-2000AsianChinaDramaFifth Generation Chinese CinemaYimou Zhang

    Roger Ebert wrote:
    To Live is a simple title, but it conceals a universe. The film follows the life of one
    family in China, from the heady days of gambling dens in the 1940s to the austere
    hardship of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. And through all of their fierce struggles
    with fate, all of the political twists and turns they endure, their hope is basically one
    summed up by the heroine, a wife who loses wealth and position and children, and
    who says, “All I ask is a quiet life together.” The movie has been directed by Zhang
    Yimou, the leading Chinese filmmaker right now (although this film offended Beijing and
    earned him a two-year ban from filmmaking). It stars his wife, Gong Li, the leading
    Chinese actress (likewise banned). Together their credits include Ju Dou, Raise the Red
    Lantern and The Story of Qui Ju. Like them it follows the fate of a strong woman, but
    also this time a strong man; somehow they stick together through incredible hardships.Read More »

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