(1996; Chinese) In 1911 at the age of thirteen, Yu Zhongliang was brought to the Pang estate at the behest of his sister, Yu Xiuyi, where he became a servant to her husband, Pang Zhangda, and his father, the master of the Pangs, preparing their opium pipes. "Opium is the source of all inspiration." In the same year the emperor of China abdicated while Pang Ruyi, a child, scampered through the ancestral hall, forbidden to females. Times were changing in China as this film of the narcotic of nostalgia by director Chen Kaige depicts in his brilliant, abrupt style.

Several years later, the Jing family break off an arranged engagement of their son to Ruyi (Gong Li) because she smokes opium. At the urging of Zhanda (Yemang Zhou), Zhongliang (He Saifei) kisses his sister (Caifei He), makes love to her, and prepares one last opium pipe for Zhanda before fleeing to Peking. Is love ever too late?

Ten years later in Shanghai, where men and women are at war with one another, Zhongliang is a desirable man who uses and betrays married women, involved with a syndicate blackmailing their husbands.

At the Pang estate the master has died, making Zhanda the new master; but because he is too ill to manage affairs, his sister Ruyi is appointed administrator with the assistance of a distant male cousin, Pang Duanwu (Kevin Lin), who has nothing to gain or lose in his position. When he loyally supports Ruyi's decision to dismiss the concubines (no longer needed in the household), both are held in contempt by the elders.

When Zhongliang's boss (Yin Tse) sends him to the Pang estate following the death of his sister's father-in-law, she exclaims: "You shouldn't be here after what you did." He asks her if she has any idea as to how much the world has changed since he left - a great war, revolution in Russia, communism, nationalism, equal rights for women, the end of arranged marriages: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life here?" Her husband is as unresponsive as a zombie, and she has no authority. Pang An cries in despair that there are no men left among the Pangs.

"I hate this place and everyone in it," Zhongliang says after spending several days to Xiuyi: "I'll never love again because of you." She replies: "Then why are you here?"

Assured by Duanwu that Zhongliang has affection for her, Ruyi uses her cousin to end her girlhood. Zhongliang refuses to leave with his sister, who reminds him too much of the past, but abandons Ruyi with Duanwu on the dock.

Welcomed back in Shanghai like a prodigal son by his boss, Zhongliang apologizes for earlier having lied (that her husband had been gone) about the Heavenly Lane woman, Mrs Shen ("Did you ever love me?"), promising to complete the job. No longer interested in the Pang fortune, only in keeping Zhongliang as his beloved principal seducer, the boss, recognizing in Zhongliang a divided heart, arranges for Ruyi's passage to Shanghai with her cousin for her to see what sort of sordid business Zhongliang's involved in.

Back at the Pang estate before her wedding day, Ruyi says she will have just one more smoke with her opium pipe, which Zhongliang prepares for her as he had for Zhanda.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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