Few weeks ago attempted to watch this, but was bowled over how brutal the training those young kids underwent to be in the Peking Opera. It's a visual feast, and on CC you get all the supplements that the physical releases has. It's very interesting to contemplate China's film tradition which the West is mostly in the dark of, but there's more now available for us than ever before.
Directed by Chen Kaige • 1993 • China Starring Leslie Cheung, Zhang Fengyi, Gong Li
A breathtakingly intimate romance unfolds against a sweeping backdrop of social upheaval in renowned director Chen Kaige’s sumptuous saga of passion, fate, and the transcendent possibilities of art. Spanning fifty years of twentieth-century Chinese history, FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE follows aspiring actors Dieyi (a heartbreaking Leslie Cheung) and Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) as they emerge from a childhood of brutal training to become Beijing-opera stars, with life mirroring art as Dieyi’s unrequited love for Xiaolou and the country’s changing political tides engulf them in their own personal tragedies of jealousy and betrayal. The first Chinese film to win the Palme d’Or is epic filmmaking of the highest order—visually and emotionally ravishing from frame to exquisite frame.
I gave Perfect Love 3 out of 5 stars, it's a heavy film, and I loathed the male lead, such an a-hole in every sense of the word. I feel that such movies are important to be like little warning signs that viewers can avoid such circumstances in real life.
Damn this life is rough, even when it's not training, you got seniors forcing themselves upon them. And to then be a conduit for art, like something beautiful and lasting with all that stuff going on, that's some indominatable human spirit right there.
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