RAISE THE RED LANTERN
With Gong Li, Ma Jingwu, and He Caifei.
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A variation on this daring prototype was presented in Zhang’s Ju Dou two years later. (As far as I know, an interim work, an action thriller called Operation Cougar, hasn’t been shown outside Asia.) Gong once again portrayed a strong-willed woman married to a much older man she doesn’t love, a wealthy silk merchant. Chafing under the man’s authoritarian grip, she takes up with his sensitive and virile nephew–only to be tragically repudiated by conventional morality. This time around the Chinese government recognized the film’s subversive commentary and imposed a ban, though it couldn’t prevent the Japanese-financed film from being shown abroad. (Zhang’s ongoing extramarital affair with Gong, a source of gossip for the Chinese public, also irritated officials.) No longer willing to work within China’s stifling studio system, Zhang turned entrepreneur and arranged for funding for his latest and boldest work, Raise the Red Lantern, from Taiwan investors by way of Hong Kong. (Which is why the film represented Hong Kong and not China in this year’s best-foreign-picture Oscar derby.) His executive producer is also Taiwanese–Hou Hsiao-hsien, himself a filmmaker of formidable talents.
There are signs in the early scenes that Songlian, given her education and disposition, might stay above the fray. Zhang even leads us to hope that she could be a catalyst for sisterly solidarity. Instead, she too is drawn into the vortex of vengeful, and sometimes comical, rivalries. At first she jostles for attention with Meishan, then she uncovers a conspiracy against her instigated by Zhuoyun, whom she’d considered a friend and who had the help of Yan’er, the pathetic and jealous maid who wishes only to take over Songlian’s place in the master’s bed. The sense of betrayal initiates a series of events in which Songlian’s willful streak shatters the surface harmony and turns destructive: faking pregnancy to monopolize Chen’s attention, ordering meals to be served in her own chambers, berating Yan’er in front of the entire household. In disgrace, she orders wine and gets drunk (breaking a taboo) and proceeds to reveal the clandestine affair Meishan is having with the family doctor–with disastrous results. In the end the age-old rules and customs claim another victim, and Songlian is defeated, driven mad partly by her own transgressions and partly by the forces that made those transgressions inevitable.
