Screening for Tuesday 7 July: Raise the Red Lantern

Director: Zhang Yimou
Country of Origin: China
Year of Release: 1992
Running time: 125 minutes
Language: Mandarin, with English subtitles

Raise the Red Lantern is a sumptuously photographed drama set in northern China in the 1920s. It stars the incomparable Gong Li as Songlian, a college student who is married off by her stepmother, becoming the fourth wife of a wealthy, elderly landlord. Songlian, who had hopes of using her education to broaden her horizons, now finds herself reduced to a small enclosure at the beck and call of her husband, who lights a lantern outside of the house of the wife with whom he intends to spend the night.

Songlian also finds herself having to negotiate her relationships with the three other wives. The first, almost as old as the landlord himself, ignores Songlian; the third, a beautiful ex-opera singer, is fiercely jealous of her; while the second wants to be her friend—or so it seems. Banned in China when it was first released—many see the film as a veiled critique of the country’s political system—Raise the Red Lantern is a moving exploration of power and intrigue in a suffocating world of ossified tradition and naked ambition.

(Some info taken from allmovie.com)