Set in 1948 in Qingdao, China against a backdrop of the rise of Communism, "The Beauty Remainstells the story of two sisters-Fei (Zhou Xun) and Ying (Vivian Wu)-separated by the dictates of custom, bound together by the will of their recently deceased father, Master Li, a legendary entrepreneur and a man who has "made generations of women suffer." The illegitimate daughter of Master Li and the maid of the household, Fei has grown up in disgrace while her half-sister, Ying, has lived a life of
opulent leisure. When Master Li dies, the sisters learn that the continuation of Fei's academic scholarship and the liquidation of the family's estate are contingent upon the return of Fei to the Li household. Forced to invite her half-sister back into the family fold, Ying is enraged. Ying assumes, however, that this proud young woman will be no threat to her eventual claim to the family fortune. But there is one complication Ying didn't count on.Though Ying and Huang (Wang Zhi Wen)-a charismatic casino owner and reformed roué-have intended to marry for many years, their relationship has always been tumultuous. Now, as two women whose lives have been dictated by the often cruel decrees of men struggle to transcend that influence, Huang is forced to choose between the love of the woman who enchants him and the reckless affair that will tear a household apart.
A delicate figurine of a movie, Beauty Remains is an account of a tragic love triangle set in China in 1948, just before the Communists won the civil war.
Beautifully art directed, costumed and shot (by Scott Kevan, who brought the same to exotic haze to the interiors of Secretary), the whole thing feels like a living, breathing tableaux vivant from a China that is about to abruptly disappear.
Life is a stage in the film%u2014a feeling confirmed by the final shot, in which the characters arrange furniture and pose for the audience, waiting for a standing ovation that will never come.
A luminous, epic dreamscape, reimagining a decaying lost paradise from whose destructive core a buoyant redemptive unshackled political consciousness and redefined, aroused sisterhood rise from the ashes of repressive patriarchy.
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