Ba wang bie ji (Farewell My Concubine) Reviews
Empire Magazine
With stunning set pieces and the dramatic backdrop of the revolution, Kaige captures perfectly the relationship between the two boys.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Top CriticThe scenes in the Peking Opera School, where boys are caned for doing wrong or right, are no less horrifying than the later tableaus of public humiliation at the hands of the Maoists.
This is entertaining filmmaking on a grand scale.
Seductively lensed but emotionally uninvolving.
Chen's remarkable movie uses an unusual love triangle to telescope more than 50 years of tumultuous Chinese history.
Cinema Writer
the drama is cheesy, simplistic and too stodgy in its presentation to really hold up to its historic framing and epic sweep
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
EmanuelLevy.Com
Visually impressive and emotionally complex, this historical epic, winner of the Cannes Festival Palme d'Or, relates the tumultuous history of China through the story of two friends who meet as children and become stars of the Peking Opera.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Well-acted but limited because its drama is emotionally uninvolving.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Lessons of Darkness
Sweeping, self-important and only moderately stirring.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Appropriately operatic, Chen's visually spectacular epic is sumptuous in every respect. Intelligent, enthralling, rhapsodic.
One of those very rare film spectacles that deliver just about everything the ads are likely to promise.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Movieline
Luxurious, memorable scenes bring the past alive, though the editing is sometimes choppy and confusing.
Filmcritic.com
A lush epic that traces 50 years in the lives of a pair of Beijing Opera stars.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
The film flows with such urgency that all its connections seem logical. And it is filmed with such visual splendor that possible objections are swept aside.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Like Cheung's ethereally plaintive voice, the movie is a siren song that's appealing at first, but held too long. It becomes an increasing whine.
The director carries us through this early history with impressive sensitivity; he has a beautiful, graceful touch, both with the camera and with his actors.
Austin Chronicle
While always entertaining, many of its historical nuances are likely to zip past American audiences. Clearly, they didn't zip past the Chinese censors.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Deseret News, Salt Lake City
Overblown and wildly flamboyant, Farewell My Concubine boasts some startling moments, a few grand set-pieces and excellent performances all around.
