Farewell My Concubine is a masterpiece of not only Chinese cinema, but of film the world over that everybody should have seen at least once in his or her lifetime. It may be a Chinese film dealing with Chinese culture and history but the insights it provides and the home truths about human nature that it exposes are universal. Farewell My Concubine is a powerful and deeply moving study of unrequited love and betrayal and the destructive impact that politics can have on art and human relationships. In stunningly beautiful pictures (think: The Last Emperor) this emotional tour de force tells the story of two Peking Opera stars, the masculine Duan Xiaolou and the effeminate Cheng Dieyi, and the woman that comes between them, against the backdrop of fifty years of Chinese history.
The film begins in 1925 when 8-year-old Dieyi (then still called Douzi) is sold by his mother to a Peking Opera school, where he meets Xiaolou (then still called Shitou) for the first time. Because of his pretty face and effeminate appearance Douzi is picked to play female parts and has the line ‘I am by nature a girl’ drilled into him until he can no longer distinguish between his opera part and reality. Meanwhile, Shitou is groomed for the role of the masculine hero. The training regime is brutal. Shitou feels protective of the younger Douzi and soon a deep friendship develops between them. Eventually, after years of hard training, they become famous and star together in the opera Farewell My Concubine - Xiaolou as the King of Chu and Dieyi as his concubine. The parts they play in the opera are symbolic of their real life relationship since by now Dieyi, still haunted by his mother’s rejection and desperate for affection, has fallen secretly in love with his friend and protector Xiaolou. Any hopes he may have harboured are shattered, however, when Xiaolou marries the beautiful and ambitious young prostitute Juxian. Juxian and Dieyi recognise each other immediately as a threat to their happiness and react with intense jealousy. It is the beginning of a love / hate triangle that is spurred on by increasingly invasive political events, from the Japanese occupation to the Communist rule and the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. As their environment descends deeper and deeper into a climate of brutality and fear, the degree of emotional cruelty the characters inflict upon each other increases as well, until…
Farewell My Concubine deservedly won the top prize at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival; it also won both the BAFTA and Golden Globe Best Foreign Film awards as well as several critics awards and was nominated for two Oscars. Zhang Fengyi as Duan Xiaolou and the great Gong Li as Juxian both give powerful performances but it is Leslie Cheung as Cheng Dieyi who walks away with the movie. His portrayal of the tormented and at times pathetic Dieyi, who can’t free himself of his obsession with Xiaolou no matter how often he is betrayed, is heartbreaking without ever slipping into sentimentality. Cheung plays Dieyi with the subtle dignity, vulnerability and emotional depth he lends to all his characters, however unsympathetic they are. It is painful to watch Dieyi’s systematic destruction as layer after layer of his being is mercilessly stripped away – all the more so as Dieyi’s fate in the film parallels much of Cheung’s own life, who, after years of suffering from depression, committed suicide in 2003. His charm, courage and outstanding acting skills will be greatly missed!
