Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

arthur_tafero 8 STARS - No Need To Understand Chinese - Ju Dou You don't need to understand a word of Chinese, even if you view this film in its native language without English subtitles. This story of a suffering Chinese wife in 1920s China who seeks sexual gratification outside of her impotent husband is a straightforward tale of passion. It is told in magnificent fashion via one beautiful shot after another by master Zhang Yimou. Gong Li, as always, is incomparable. Zhang uses the same formula with her that Carlo Ponti used with Sophia Loren, the large-breasted star of Italy, who was a great actress trapped in a super-sexy body. In Two Women, Ponti did everything he could to downplay Loren's natural assets: plain clothes, dirt on her face, and mundane surroundings. Zhang does the same exact thing with Gong Li and is successful. Ju Dou is not the best work of Zhang, but that is like saying The Birds or Psycho was not the best work of Hitchcock. This film is gorgeous and shot to perfection. Millions of women will identify with it. Highly recommended.

Eternality Ju Dou is Zhang Yimou's first Palme d'Or (Cannes) nominated film. It is also sandwiched between two celebrated films of his – Red Sorghum (1987) and Raise the Red Lantern (1991) – that won the Golden Bear (Berlin) and Silver Lion (Venice) respectively. Perhaps the most famous and acclaimed mainland Chinese filmmaker known to the West, Zhang took Chinese cinema to a new level of prominence in the early 1990s, spearheading the Fifth Generation movement together with a few other directors, most notably with Chen Kaige, who made Yellow Earth (1985) and Farewell, My Concubine (1993).Ju Dou is also the name of the lead character played by Gong Li. She is a woman in poverty who is bought by a rich old man who runs a dye mill together with his poor nephew, Tianqing. She is forced to marry him and bear a son. However, the old man is impotent and physically and sexually abuses Ju Dou every night because she could not give him a son. She seeks solace in Tianqing. Slowly, their relationship turns into an extramarital affair, leading to Ju Dou's pregnancy and birth of a newborn son, which she manages to convince the old man is his.Steeped in Chinese cultural values and tradition, Zhang's film is like a classical Greek tragedy set in 1920s rural China. The poor are exploited by the rich and capable, and it is only a matter of time that something tragic would happen. The son begins to call the old man his father, who becomes paralyzed after a fall, and later suffers a bizarre death. The son grows up to be a quiet and violent person, and appears to lay the blame on Tianqing for impregnating his mother, and causing his rightful father anguish.In the film's most bitterly ironic sequence, Ju Dou and Tianqing are forced to follow a Chinese custom – to weep, call out to their dead family member, and try to stop the coffin for 49 times. This sequence is edited in such a way that the scenes repeat themselves, highlighting the raw emotions of the two secret lovers and asking painfully of the question: What's worse than mourning for a loved one? To be forced to mourn for someone whom you do not love.Zhang's use of vibrant colors is astonishing, and has been an integral part of his visual style over the last two decades. Huge pieces of cloth dyed in red or yellow are suspended on a rung and left out to dry. These not only add to the visual beauty of the film but also take on a symbolistic meaning, representing themes of love (or lust), and angst. When a character dies, he drowns in red dye, as yards of red cloth drop and conceal him, like the drawing of stage curtains on a performer after a show has finished.Together with minimalist music and beautiful, composed shots of rural life, Zhang has created a film that within its picturesque landscape lies a haunting circular tragedy. It is a very bleak portrait of peasantry life ruined by the strict adherence to cultural traditions. It is also an indirect but potent critique of China's Cultural Revolution with the old man taking on the symbol of Maoist brutality and injustice, and "his" son as the symbol of the Red Guard, brainwashed from young to retaliate against the non-Maoist ideology – the right to individual freedom – as embraced by Ju Dou and Tianqing, but very sadly, cruelly denied.SCORE: 8.5/10 (www.filmnomenon.blogspot.com) All rights reserved!

lastliberal Gong Li is just about one of the most beautiful actresses in the world today. It is hard to believe that she has been acting for 20 years.This is one of her earlier works, and it is an excellent example of her talent. It is also one of the early films for Yimou Zhang, who also directed Gong Li in Curse of the Golden Flower. He shows the promise of a great director in this film.There is not much that is pleasant her. Ju Dou (Gong Li) is bought by an evil man who has beaten two wives to death for not bearing him a son. She is beaten mercilessly and he has constant sex with her to have a son.The problem is not his wives, but him, and she has a son secretly with his nephew (Baotian Li). It saves her life, but matters continue to get more and more complicated until the final tragedy.One of the really interesting features of the film is the Chinese funeral ritual.The film is a great example of the early work of two great talents, but do not think that early means weak, as they were bother strong from the beginning.

jzappa Ju Dou is certainly an engaging enough film, because I like a filmmaker like Zhang Yimou who can be so fascinating with deep hues of colors in his costumes, sets, and cinematography. That's the way he tells his films' stories. And it's beautifully expressive, even in a grainy, lower- budgeted movie like Ju Dou.In its story of lustful vindication against a frightfully disgusting character, it can seem as if it's going in the wrong direction, sometimes disappointing the viewer's lustfully vengeful expectations for the movie's hero and heroine, but it should be realized that Ju Dou is a movie about passion vs. tradition, the emotional tempests people would go through under the businesslike customs and conventions of the time period.Ju Dou is worth seeing for its directors and writer's intuitive understanding of its drama and Gong Li's intense early performance. Hero and House of Flying Daggers are much more breathtaking than this early work of Yimou's, but for fans of emotional, romantic yet biting character dramas, and for fans of Asian cinema, I think you will be moved.