Director: Zhang Yimou
Scriptwriter : Ni Zhen
(after Su Tong's novel)
Cinematographer: Zhao Fei
Editing: Du Yuan
Art Director: Qao Jiuping Dong Humiao
Music: Zhao Jiping
Cast: Gong Li, Ma Jingwu, He Saifei, Cao Cuifen, Jin Shutyuan
Production:
Nanjing Film Studio
Distribution:
Films sans Frontières
70 Bd Sébastopol
75 003 Paris
France
Tel: 0033 1 42 77 01 24
Fax: 0033 1 42 77 42 66
Mail: [email protected]
Year: 1991
DCP, Colour, 125 min, OV Mandarin with French Subtitles
In China in the twenties, nineteen-year-old student Songlian becomes the fourth wife of Master Chen Zuoqian, a rich man in his fifties. According to tradition, as for the other three wives she will wait in a pavilion of the gorgeous house, until the master chooses the wife he decides to honor for the night. A red lantern is then lit at the door of the fortunate wife. In this closed world where wives are jealous of each other, Songlian feels she is sinking into void and madness…
Four seasons, four parts of a film whose unchanging frames and static shots make the weight of secular traditions even more present in a China apparently immobile since the Middle Ages. The women humiliated by their ‘master’ do not rebel but struggle to keep the position of ‘favorite’.
In the self-contained world of a Chinese rich family’s house, the four wives only use the power of speech to fight their rivals..
