Life imitates art for a handful of characters in the Peking Opera who perform the title tragedy. Hong Kong pop star Leslie Cheung turns in an amazing performance as the concubine, a pained and jealous man unable to distinguish between male or female, reality or dream, and doomed never to achieve his one desire: his king’s love. The makeup, costuming, and production design are immensely detailed in a film that spans fifty years of modern Chinese history. This astonishingly beautiful epic is one of the greatest films produced in China.

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