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MovieMail's Review
David Parkinson discusses Zhang Yimou's intense and beautifully shot tale, Ju Dou.
Given his previous brushes with the Chinese authorities, Zhang Yimou must have accepted the praise lavised upon him for the pageantry he devised for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics with a wry smile. In 1990, the censors banned his second feature as a director and, in spite of Zhang winning the prize for Best Director at Cannes, attempts were made to block its selection for the Foreign Film category at the Academy Awards.
It's easy to see, however, why the Communist Party would have objected to Liu Heng's adaptation of his own short story, Fu Xi, Fu Xi. Even though he switched the action from contemporary times to the 1920s, this is still a searing attack on a rigid social system that acquiesces in tyranny, encourages the repression of women and perpetuates the subjugation of the poor. But even though it is suffused with allegorical fury, this impossibly handsome picture can still be enjoyed as a barnstorming melodrama.
Having killed two wives for failing to provide him with an heir, silk merchant Jinshan (Li Wei) purchases a new bride, Ju Dou (Gong Li). However, she proves no more fertile, until she seduces his voyeuristic nephew Tianqing (Li Baotian) and they convince Jinshan that their child is his own. But, even though they parade their passion before the now-crippled Jinshan, the lovers are forced apart by the conventions of the local community and the machinations of their detestable son, Tianbai (Zheng Ji-an).
As a former cinematographer, Zhang clearly abetted Changwei Gu and Lun Yang in the sumptuous Eastmancolor imagery, as trademark reds abound to symbolise passions that keep threatening to overspill like the dye in the vast vats in which the bolts of cloth are dipped before they are left to flutter like banners of war on towering poles outside Jinshan's near-penitentiary premises. But Ju Dou also established Zhang as a storyteller of great economy and fluency, whose ability to coax performances of ravishing intensity out of Gong Li made them one of the most formidable partnerships in world cinema. Rarely has pulp fiction witnessed such breathtaking artistry.
In this dark, sensual and visually sumptuous drama set in in 1920s China, Ju Dou (Gong Li), is forced into marriage to Yang Jin-Shan (Li Wei), the wealthy owner of a silk dyeing mill. She is repeatedly mistreated and tortured by her elderly husband for failing to bear him an heir, even though he is infertile.
Her suffering attracts the sympathy of her husband's young nephew, the gentle Yang Tian-Qing (Li Bao-Tian), who is the sole employee in the lonely factory. Their tender friendship blossoms into love and the two begin a secret affair.
When Ju Dou's elderly husband becomes wheelchair-bound, the young lovers take their affair out into the open, producing a child that he must claim as his own to save face.
Ju Dou was banned in China, where party leaders saw it as an
unflattering metaphor for modern Chinese life, a society ruled by a coterie of aging, controlling men. Acclaimed throughout the world, this film almost didn't come to the screen at all. Chinese officials tried to hide Ju-Dou behind a wall of censorship - an act that prompted Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen and other major filmmakers to speak out in support of this remarkable work.
