Leofwine_draca JU DOU is another early effort for Chinese director Zhang Yimou, and one that has much in common with his debut feature RED SORGHUM. Once again Gong Li stars, here playing an unhappily married woman whose mill owner husband abuses her horribly. She ends up having a kid with her husband's nephew, something that seals her fate. As with pretty much all of Yimou's work, this is beautifully shot throughout with some nicely artistic compositions, while the acting is understated and the plot elements subdued; Yimou goes for the naturalistic approach throughout. I found it slow-paced and lacking in engaging characters, only picking up for the effectively tragic climax.

G K Ju Dou is as sumptuously cinematic as it is woefully fatalistic. The film is a tragedy, focusing on the characters of Ju Dou (Gong Li), a beautiful young woman who has been sold as a wife to Yang Jinshan (Li Wei), an old cloth dyer.Ju Dou is a superbly torrid melodrama with similarities to The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946); the colours have a livid force and the storytelling holds you completely in its grip. The film was banned for a few years in China, but the ban has since been lifted. It was also the first Chinese film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, in 1990.

Don Muvo I am a lover of history, and historical films, too, but Ju Dou has a lot of faults. Most of all this movie fails in story telling, by using weak characters and weak plot development. The only areas in which this film deserves the 10, given by many reviewers, in in cinematography, setting, and costume. One reviewer compared this movie to a Greek tragedy, but I don't know of any Greek tragedies that have endings as bad as this one. The only characters that seem to develop in a normal way are the uncle, Jin-shan, and his wife, Jo Dou. The attention that was paid to this awful relationship overshadowed the lack of detail paid to the characters in the rest of the movie.Jo Dou is the only character with a healthy motivation, and her fall is the "T" in the tragedy here. "Uncle" is only motivated by his drive to have an heir. His ancestor-worship calls attention to this, and thus the movie can be taken as religious criticism.Nephew Tian-qing's character was extremely weak, and only flourished in a single act of challenging his uncle. This, coupled with his physical unattractiveness caused the move to be difficult to watch, in spite of the color themes. I don't really understand much about Chinese color symbology, but this is a plus. In one scene, a customer comes to order cloth, 15 yellow (tradition) and 3 red (luck, fire, and energy). There is a lot more yellow than red. This is the main point I think the director is trying to make.Tian-qing's weak character is probably the main thing that made this move hard for me to watch. Second to that is the treatment of the autistic son, Tian-bai. One gets the idea from watching this that in society, and Chinese society especially, some people feel that their children are dropped from trees, and that the only way a child can develop a personality is from encountering other children and playing with them. "Uncle" finally gets a retrieve, when he develops a notion of parenting. This calls attention, perhaps, to the "dirty little secret" not being confronted in our society about autism - that it really has a lot to do with neglecting children. The details of Tian-bai's upbringing that lead to his murderous behavior are almost entirely eliminated from the story.At this point the movie goes upside down, the Uncle's develops moral superiority as well as ownership of the child, and for Tian-qing and Ju Dou, everything is downhill from there. I might revise my opinion of this if there was a list of "top-ten downer movies of all time".

smatysia I found this movie to be gripping cinema, even if some things weren't really explicable to me, an Occidental. I understand (or at least am aware of) the basics of Chinese society enough to get most things in this film, but like "ebossert" said, many of the things that the child does seem to bear little relation to the reality around him. Yes, he suspects bad behavior by some of the other characters, but is that enough to drive him to such lengths? Kudos to the lovely Gong Li, for carrying this films title role so well. Also to the other two main actors who I was unfamiliar with, Li Bao-tian and Li Wei. At least, that is my impression, even though it is difficult to judge acting performances in a language one doesn't understand. As an aside, I suppose the 1920's are a popular setting for Chinese movies, as that was really the last time that China was a normal country, being wracked by war in the 30's and 40's, and smothered under Communism and (Communism-caused famine) after that. Even with it's flaws, a pretty damn good flick.