"Farewell, My Concubine"
                        A film review by
                      Linda Lopez McAlister
               for the December, 1993 issue of HERS.

   This year's Cannes Film Festival had two first prize winners,
Jane Campion's "The Piano," which I reviewed here last month, and
Chen Kaige's "Farewell, My Concubine."   Although these films
couldn't be more different from each other, I can see why the
judges found it impossible to choose between them.  Each is a
magnificent achievement in its own way.

   "Farewell, My Concubine," a Chinese film based on a novel by
Hong Kong writer Lilian Lee, was banned in China before it
achieved its great success in the West.  It sets itself the
monumental task of telling the whole history of China in the
Twentieth Century.  Just as the recent film "The Remains of the
Day" depicts developments in Britain's geopolitical fortunes not
by portraying those at the center of power but by relating the
life stories of two people whose lives touch ever so tangentially
on important political events, "Farewell, My Concubine" also
depicts China's recent political history by focusing on the lives
of people who are not, personally, players on the political
stage.  These people are, rather, players on a different stage--
that of the ancient Peking Opera.

   The film begins with a striking visual image of two costumed
figures in a cone of light, two former performers in the Peking
Opera in the spotlight once again twenty years after having
performed there and eleven years since they have even seen one
another.  Then the story is told in flashback, starting in the
age of the warlords in the 1920s.  A woman and her young son push
through the crowded streets and stop to watch some actors perform
for the crowd.  Afterward she seeks out the leader of the troupe
and begs him to take her son into his school where actors are
trained for the opera; she is a prostitute who cannot support her
child.  The teacher inspects the boy and rejects him because he
has a deformity, a sixth finger on one hand, that will repulse
the audience, he says.  The woman leads her son away into a back
alley and abruptly amputates the offending digit, so desperate is
she to find a way to make a possible life for her son.

   The life into which he is thrown is equally violent and brutal
for the training these boys are put through relies on corporal
punishment for the slightest infraction until perfection is
achieved in the intricate and demanding ancient art of Chinese
opera.  The boy is frail and small and is trained to play female
roles, being beaten every time he, by mistake, sings, "I am by
nature a boy not a girl."  By the time he reaches adolescence,
Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) is the most exquisite performer in the role
of the concubine and is, offstage and on, somewhat feminine in
his demeanor, while his larger childhood friend and protector
Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) plays the masculine role of the King on
stage and is robust and a "normal" male in his offstage behavior
and desires.  In the 1930s they are the toast of Peking, treated
like movie stars wherever they go, admired and adored.  Xiaolou
frequents high class brothels and without really meaning to do so
ends up saying he's the fiance of, and then marrying, a
prostitute named Juxian (played by the wonderful Gong Li whom you
may know from her previous roles in "Raise the Red Lantern" and
"The Story of Qui Ju").  Dieyi, who loves his friend offstage
as well as on, is crushed, angry, and distraught.  He plunges
joylessly into opium smoking and drunken erotic adventures
with Mr. Yuan, a wealthy admirer.  The artistic partnership,
however, continues through the Japanese invasion when Xiaolou
is arrested by the Japanese and Dieyi performs for them in exchange
for Xiaolou's release, an act of loyalty to his "stage brother"
and disloyalty to China for which he will pay dearly later.

    As China moves through the Nationalists and the various Commu-
nist regimes and into the Cultural Revolution the complex crises
on the political scene are matched by the complex changes they
bring to the lives of Dieyi, Xiaolou, and Juxian.  Love,
jealousy, hatred, betrayal, and dedication to their art move them
in a pattern as complex, dramatic, and inevitable in its
denouement as that of the story of the king and concubine they
devote their lives to embodying.

   I came out of the theater after seeing this nearly three-hour
epic (and there is a five hour version that has had special
screenings in some cities) I felt emotionally drained and yet
filled with admiration for the cinematic achievement this film
represents.  I don't think I know of anything quite so ambitious
in its scope since some of the silent epics of Eisenstein or
Gance.  If you are a lover of the art of film, this is something
you definitely will want to see.  It was part of one of the
recent film festivals in Sarasota and will open in Tampa at the
Tampa Theater in December.

Copyright 1993 by Linda Lopez McAlister.  No part of this review
may be reprinted or reproduced without the permission of the
author.