Fifteen years before Hero, director Zhang Yimou was roasting Westerners’ eyeballs with this passionate fairytale fable.
Set in ’20s China, it’s the tale of a bride-to-be (Gong Li) rescued from a bandit rapist, only to be accosted by her saviour once she’s married.
Unfolding unevenly from sweeping melodrama to clunky wartime allegory, this is squarely a film of visual, not narrative, pleasures.
The breathtaking colour and immersive sensuality has the transporting power of a memory, even when the skin-flaying starts...
Jonathan Crocker
