FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE 霸王別姬

30TH ANNIVERSARY, NEW 4K RESTORATION OF THE COMPLETE, UNCUT VERSION 

RUNS SEPTEMBER 22 – OCTOBER 5 AT FILM FORUM

 

 

Chen Kaige’s 1993 Palme d’Or-Winning Epic, FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE, Complete, Uncut Version Opens Sept. 22 at Film Forum

 

Chen Kaige’s Palme d’Or winning, two-time Academy Award-nominated epic masterpiece FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE, starring Leslie Cheung, Zhang Fengyi, and Gong Li, will run at Film Forum from Friday, September 22 through Thursday, October 5 (two weeks) in a 30th anniversary, new 4K restoration of Kaige’s original cut (20 minutes longer than its Miramax theatrical release version). 

 

Fifth generation Chinese filmmaker Kaige’s much acclaimed adaptation of the Lilian Lee novel follows Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung, Happy Together) and Duan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) as they grow up enduring the harsh training of the Peking Opera Academy, where instructors regularly beat students to instill in them the discipline needed to master the complex physical and vocal technique. As the two boys mature, they develop complementary talents: Dieyi, with his fine, delicate features, assumes the female roles while Xiaolou plays masculine warlords. Their dramatic identities become real for Dieyi when he falls in love with Xiaolou, who fails to return his affections and instead marries a courtesan, Juxian (Gong Li, 2046, Raise the Red Lantern).

 

FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE’s sumptuous narrative spans 50 years from the early 20th century to the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, capturing the vast historical scope of a changing world. It was selected as one of the "100 Best Films in Global History" by TIME Magazine and remains the only Chinese-language film to ever win the Palme d’Or.

 

“An unhurried journey on the great tide of modern Chinese history, this gorgeous, intoxicating epic is confident enough of its visual and narrative power not to rush the telling. FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE not only covers a lot of territory, its sense of visual pageantry brings all of it vividly to life.” 

– Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

 

“One of those very rare film spectacles that deliver just about everything the ads are likely to promise: action, history, exotic color, multitudes in confrontation, broad overviews of social and political landscapes, all intimately rooted in a love story of vicious intensity, the kind that plays best when it goes badly, which is most of the time. FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE is a vastly entertaining movie.”

– Vincent Canby, The New York Times

 

"What is amazing, given the conditions under which the film was made, is the freedom and energy with which it plays…FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE is a demonstration of how a great epic can function. Like such dissimilar films as DR. ZHIVAGO and A PASSAGE TO INDIA, it took me to another place and time, and made it emotionally comprehensible. This is one of the year's best films.”

– Roger Ebert

 

“Chen Kaige carries us through this early history with impressive sensitivity; he has a beautiful, graceful touch, both with the camera and with his actors.”

– Hal Hinson, Washington Post

 

Directed by Chen Kaige

Screenplay by by Lilian Lee and Lu Wei, based on the novel by Lee

Cinematography: Gu Changwei

With Leslie Cheung, Zhang Fengyi, Gong Li, Lu Qi, Ying Da, Ge You, Lei Han, Tong Di

1993 | 170 min. | China / Hong Kong | In Mandarin with English subtitles

A Film Movement Release

 

https://my.filmforum.org/events/farewell-my-concubine