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Movie Description
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.
Industry Reviews
"...Emotionally complex....MOON is a visually intoxicating [film]..."
Variety - Derek Elley (05/20/1996)
"...Ravishing cinematography....A superior essay in sumptuous film style..."
Film Comment - Mary Corliss (07/01/1996)
"...A sensuous cinematic whoosh of opium smoke, lily pads and seductively lowered eyes....Beautiful..."
New York Times - Stephen Holden (06/13/1997)
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