Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A legend lives on
Wish that I existed in your world, so that I could at least comfort and share the pain that you had to go through. May god bless and guide you to the heavenly peaceful space, where you will be away from all the trouble that you wanted to get away from.Thank you for sharing your talent and bringing us the entertainment for the past two decades. While we all are carrying on through this difficult time, we will remember you. And your legacy will live on ..... Farewell Leslie
Rating:  - A Chinese Opera Epic
This wonderful Chinese film was nominated for several academy awards. It is a story about Chinese opera and the cultural revolution but at another level it is about relationships. We follow the story of two actors together since childhood and the woman who comes between them. The cinematography is breathtaking (It should be no surprise that director Chen Kaige was originally a cinematographer). Pause the film occasionally (especially if you have a DVD) and just savour the rich colours and textures of the film. It is a gem.This was Leslie Cheung's first major role and it also stars Gong Li who is wonderful in Yimou Zhang's trilogy Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern and Ju Dou. (If you like Concubine as much as I did, you will also love these three movies.)
Rating:  - Private Tortures
After a rather solemn start, we see a woman walking through a crowded street to show her son the street performers. Soon she has found a place for her son (Dieyi) in an Opera training school. Chen Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) learns to play the part of the famous concubine in Chinese history. He so embraces the part he can no longer tell the difference between reality and fantasy and falls in love with Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) who plays the part of the king. A brutal and demanding life at an Opera School is only the start in a cycle of abuse which continues through the main characters lives. If you enjoy sword fighting, skip this and watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which I felt was much more beautiful in spirit. This movie is more obsessed with violence and the war in the hearts of the characters and the country. Complex emotions and a time of conflict set the stage for a battle of hearts and minds. The actors weave their way through life, half in fantasy and half in harsh reality. They absorb experiences and either developing character or falling to their passions. Chen Dieyi's obsession with the stage carries over into his every day life so much that it destroys everyone around him. Some of the lines are magnificent and very meaningful. I loved the idea of how you can search far and wide for something, only to find it by chance. The idea that each person is responsible for their own fate is also emphasized. From an aesthetic perspective, well worth seeing and the cinematography is superb. I you are looking for an inspirational experience, this will not take you there. It is highly dramatic, intensely emotional and includes themes of forbidden desires and reckless abandon. This movie is not filled with romantic love or even human kindness. Instead, forbidden love is the vehicle through which jealously makes its entrance. Where there is love, there is pain. This is a movie about the deepest desires, the most awful obsessions and the passions of the human heart. All the characters truly crave peace of mind and to be loved, yet they seem trapped in their world which is constantly changing around them for the worse. You are left with the feeling that as each actor took steps on stage, they also took steps in the direction of their own tragic fate. Poignant.
| 
