Farewell My Concubine
Farewell My Concubine
Farewell My Concubine begins very strongly and ends equally powerfully, but has a long, sagging middle, where it, too, turns pretty soapy. The story of two friends, Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou, apprenticed as boys to the Peking opera, it follows them through their arduous rise to stardom, through their troubled private lives and their downfall under Communist abuse. The tortures inflicted by their teachers on these young boys are related with a chilling objectivity that is not all that far from relish. The atmosphere is midway between that of Oliver Twist and that of Octave Mirbeau's protopornographic classic, Torture Garden.
These sequences explain a lot about why Chinese acrobats are unsurpassable, and why Far Eastern peoples can endure hardship better than most others can. The film, written by Lilian Lee and Lu Wei from the formers novel, is clearly in the popular, subartistic vein, but the impact of the subject matter and Kaige's forceful direction combine to rescue it from mediocrity. Dieyi is delicate of build and a homosexual, and excels at women's roles. Xiaolou is burly, almost beefy, and specializes in warriors. We see them perform diverse roles, but especially the opera Farewell My Concubine, in which the mighty King of Chu (Xiaolou), finally defeated, wants his horse and his concubine Wu to escape to safety. Both noble creatures prefer to stay with their master, Wu (Dieyi) dancing for him one last time before slitting her throat with his sword. This opera becomes symbolic of the destinies of our principals. Dieyi is in love with the heterosexual Xiaolou, who, however, roisters in brothels, and ends up marrying the beautiful superwhore Juxian, who makes him a shrewd and loyal wife. The jealous Dieyi turns cold to Xiaolou and icy to Juxian, and gets involved in shady homosexual relationships with persons in power.
The ways in which politics and history impinge on these relationships is not without...
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