Released 1991
Stars Li Gong, Cuifen Cao, Caifei He, Kong Lin
Directed by Yimou Zhang

When her father dies, a young woman is forced to get married. She decides to marry a rich man who is already married to three other women. There's an apartment for each of the wives, and she's quietly informed that a red lantern is raised each night outside the quarters of the wife who will be honored by a visit from the master. So opens this Chinese film of voluptuous physical beauty and angry passions. The film was shot in the classic three-strip Technicolor process, now abandoned by Hollywood, which allows a richness of reds and yellows no longer possible in American films. There's a sense in which it  exists solely for the eyes. Entirely apart from the plot, there is the sensuous pleasure of the architecture, the fabrics, the color contrasts, the faces of the actresses. But beneath the beauty is the cruel reality of this life and the sin of slavery.