Farewell My Concubine

Chen Kaige, China, 1993, 156 minutes

From Warlord-rule to Cultural Revolution the history of China in the 20th Century is surely the most extreme, intense, enormous and startling story anyone could try to tell. Kaige Chen's projected task sounds quite impossible then, when you consider he's going to do just that and pop a love triangle (where Fengyi Zhang (as Duan "the King,"), must decide between his stage brother Leslie Cheung (as Dieyi, "the Concubine,") or the always exceptional Gong Li (a prostitute)) on top, in case accurate history isn't compelling enough a narrative as it is.

52 years of the friendship of the two men is depicted, from their gruelling training to be actors for the beautifully presented Peking opera, through the smashing of these traditions demanded by violently revolutionary politics.

You can't help but learn a great deal from this film about politics, love, life and faith, but it absolutely does not feel like a lecture, and no one message is presented to the viewer explicitly. The cliché "a feast for the eyes" is sadly necessary to begin to describe the huge and intricate, painful and beautiful, accurate and original visuals the sterling direction presents, though the art of the storytelling cannot be satisfactorily expressed either.

The power of the film is crudely shown by the fact that the Chinese censors banned, removed, re-presented and banned the film again, a good few times in several years, torn between it's artistic brilliance and subversive portrayals of individuality defying politics, homosexuality, suicide, torture and belief. In the west though, it has always been celebrated, winning the Golden Globe for Best Foreign film and Best Picture at Cannes, thank goodness.

Everyone should see this film, all 170 minutes of it (the full cut, with all the gorgeously stylised Peking opera), and no-one who appreciates film as art form, entertainment or challenge will regret it.

Review by Jane Picksley
Written for EUFS Programme Spring 2001

Set against the dramatic changes in China from 1925-1977 Farewell My Concubine follows the lives of two boys who trained at the Peking Opera Academy. Douzi (Leslie Cheung) is abandoned there by his prostitute mother and Shitou (Zhang Fengyi) becomes his friend. The harsh life they lead and cruelties they are forced to endure are counter-balanced by the sweet moments of success on stage. Douzi has difficulty in accepting his fate playing female roles but they become two of the greatest performers in Beiping, most famous for playing King Tu and his devoted concubine.

Through marriage, desertion, manipulation, and heroin addiction, their friendship is successfully put to the test, but the Cultural Revolution erupts and they are ultimately forced to betray each other They are finally reunited to perform Farewell My Concubine a decade later. Ranging from the most squalid to the most flamboyant images, this is wholly what opera is about - the trials, loves, losses, extremes, passions. It is an examination of the fantasy world that sumounds the stage - Douzi completely becomes his stage persona, Cheng Dieyi, and loses all distinction between reality and dreams, male and female, life and death. "In his world...the real and the imagined is blurred" - Chen Kaige. "breathtaking...in its imaginative insight and historical range" manages the diffiult feat of being spectacular and intimate at the same time".

Review by Gio MacDonald
Taken from EUFS Programme 1994-95