Farewell My Concubine Reviews (original) (raw)

Summary Two boys meet at an opera training school in Peking in 1924. Their resulting friendship will span nearly 70 years and will endure some of the most troublesome times in China's history.

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Summary Two boys meet at an opera training school in Peking in 1924. Their resulting friendship will span nearly 70 years and will endure some of the most troublesome times in China's history.

Top Cast

93% Positive
26 Reviews

7% Mixed
2 Reviews

0% Negative
0 Reviews

93% Positive
26 Reviews

7% Mixed
2 Reviews

0% Negative
0 Reviews

The movie is more stunning than ever, a daring blend of history and personal storytelling with one of the most striking performances of its era from Leslie Cheung, a performer who left us way too soon.

A vastly entertaining movie. It's also one of such recognizably serious concerns that you can sink into it with pleasure and count it a cultural achievement.

Appropriately operatic, Chen's visually spectacular epic is sumptuous in every respect. Intelligent, enthralling, rhapsodic.

Thanks to Chen's eye and the strong central performances, Farewell My Concubine comes together with historical resonance and stirring, full-blooded sweep. [29 Oct 1993, p.51]

Director Chen and screenwriters Lilian Lee and Lu Wei (based on Lee's original novel) create a tapestry of detail woven with visual spectacle, historical saga and human drama. At over 2 1/2 hours running time, Farewell My Concubine is both too brief and too luxurious.

Dramatizing totalitarian oppression is hardly novel, but Farewell My Concubine may be the first film to capture the unique spiritual cruelty of a regime in which beauty itself had become a crime.

Like Cheung's ethereally plaintive voice, the movie is a siren song that's appealing at first, but held too long. It becomes an increasing whine.

100% Positive
8 Ratings

0% Mixed
0 Ratings

0% Negative
0 Ratings

100% Positive
8 Ratings

0% Mixed
0 Ratings

0% Negative
0 Ratings

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Production Company Beijing Film Studio, Tomson Films, China Film Co-Production Corporation

Release Date Oct 15, 1993

Duration 2 h 51 m

Rating R

Tagline The passionate story of two lifelong friends and the woman who comes between them.

Golden Globes, USA

• 1 Win & 1 Nomination

New York Film Critics Circle Awards

• 2 Wins & 2 Nominations