Run time: 125 mins

Based on the novel Wives and Concubines, this was the final part of Zhang Yimou’s Red trilogy, that opened with Red Sorghum and Ju Dou.

It’s 1920’s China and nineteen year old Songlian (Gong Li) is married to a man with three other wives. Each evening, red lanterns are lit outside the courtyard of whichever wife the master chooses to visit. Songlian joins three other women in the walled compound: First Mistress Yuru (the senior authority), Second Mistress Zhuoyun (seemingly kind but manipulative), and Third Mistress Meishan (a former opera singer).

Desperate to secure her status and the red lanterns, Songlian fakes a pregnancy. As the women reluctantly battle it out for their master’s affections, the film gradually moves towards its inevitably tragic ending.

The film can be interpreted in a number of ways – as a cry against the subjection of women in China, as an attack on feudal attitudes – and yet it works because it is so fascinating simply on the level of a melodrama.

The entire ensemble excels throughout. But it’s Zhang’s aesthetic subtlety and Li’s spirited defiance that make this so compelling, moving and courageous. (Jack Whiting)