Temptress Moon (1996)

Synopsis: A lush, lyrical parable about the modernization of China, TEMPTRESS MOON is the story of Zhongliang (Leslie Cheung), a Shanghai gangster raised on the sumptuous rural estate of the powerful, opium-addled Pang family. As a boy,... A lush, lyrical parable about the modernization of China, TEMPTRESS MOON is the story of Zhongliang (Leslie Cheung), a Shanghai gangster raised on the sumptuous rural estate of the powerful, opium-addled Pang family. As a boy, Zhongliang, promised the life of a student, becomes instead a servant for his sister and her drug-addicted husband and a playmate for Ruyi (Gong Li), the female heir to the Pang dynasty. A permanent outsider, Zhongliang escapes the painful decadence of the Pang household and becomes a smooth-talking mobster, seducing women in the jazz-saturated clubs of 1920s Shanghai, but he is forced to face his past when hired to seduce and abduct Ruyi in a criminal attempt to gain control over the now vulnerable Pang estate. What begins as a routine seduction becomes more complicated when Zhongliang finds himself unable to escape his true feelings for Ruyi and crippling memories of his painful childhood. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle revels in the eclectic visual spectacle of a tradition-bound China cracking and hatching its version of the jazz age. Li and Cheung turn in inspired performances, their palpable onscreen chemistry igniting director Chen Kaige's magnificently detailed historical epic. [More]

Starring: Leslie Cheung, Gong Li, Kevin Lin, He Saifei

Starring: Leslie Cheung, Gong Li, Kevin Lin, He Saifei, Zhang Shi, Lin Lianqun, Ge Xiangting, Xie Tian, David Wu, Zhou Jie, Zhou Yemang, Ren Lei, Wang Ying, Ge Lin

Director: Chen Kaige

Director: Chen Kaige
Screenwriter: Shu Kei
Story: Chen Kaige, Wang Anyi
Producer: Tong Cunlin, Feng Hsu
Composer: Zhao Jiping

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