Raise the Red Lantern（Epouses et concubines or Da hong deng long gao gao gua）by Zhang Yimou

Raise the Red Lantern（Epouses et concubines or Da hong deng long gao gao gua）
Cinema Release Date: December 20, 1991
Directed by Zhang Yimou
With Gong Li, Caifei He, Cao Cuifen
Original Title: Da hong deng long gao gao gua
Feature Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong. Genre: Drama
Time: 02h05min Production Year: 1991

We are in North China in the 20s: Songlian (Gong Li), who is 19 years old, becomes the fourth wife of the rich master Zaoquian Chen (Ma Jingwu). She will now live cloistered from the three other wives she sees only at shared meals. Yuru the first wife (Jin Shuyuan), who has passed the age to please and does not cause any concern. But it is not the same with two others with whom she faces, because they, devoured with envy, strive, whenever possible, to plot intrigues. 

The second wife Zhuoyun (Caoo Quifen) revealing herself beneath a truly Machiavellian kind. It was she who indirectly causes the death of Yan'er, the servant-concubine, then Meishan, the third wife, former opera singer, who is accused of adultery with Dr. Gao. Husband flouted the will and executed by his servants in the torture chamber, and life resumed its course as if nothing had happened. Except for that Songlian, horrified by this horrible murder, turning into madness. Then a fifth wife adds to the house of the master who has the right to life and death over his women.

     

After Red Sorghum and Ju Du, Wives and Concubines is the third part that Zhang Yimou has devoted to women's status in China before the war, when the wife was subservient to the husband's authority and could not release herself by death or madness. Although constantly question the authority of men, they appear only furtively in the film, but the authority they have and they have over their wives captive proves haunting. In this virtual universe prison, behind closed doors this oppressive governed by immutable rites, the only element of life is constituted by the lighting of red lanterns which signals the visit of the Lord in the apartment of the wife. 

He came honor for a few hours and must comply with its requirements. As in his previous films, Yimou uses the same female singer, Gong Li, with whom he was living. Songlian remarkable, she can not resign herself to a mere sexual object. Wives and Concubines stands out as a film of rare beauty and aesthetics with planes of light refined to the extreme, flamboyant images of place where unity is respected and which is by its quality, thoroughness of his narrative, a jewel of the 7th Art. Do not forget that this feature greatly contributed to the rise of Asian cinema, so little known in France and even Europe. Yimou is among those who gave the cinema of his country credentials. A film that is reviewed with the same emotion and that seems to defy time.