Raise the Red Lantern [19]

This movie is slow paced and sometimes hard to watch because the emotion just overflows. Songlian marries to a wealthy Chinese man, she’s named his fourth mistress. She was a university student until her father died and she couldn’t afford school anymore. She arrives an independent woman, who does everything for herself but everyone’s at her feet, being that she’s the new and most dear mistress now. Even though we never see her husband’s face we know the kind of man he is, culture and tradition is severely important to him.  The main custom we see in the film is that, well the mistresses all have a different house, and whoever he decides to sleep with that night, the red lanterns outside and inside their house are raised and lit.

The mistresses all plot against each other, except for the first one, she’s too old and it’s not like she could get the husband to want her anyway. The second mistress is the worst, with a “face of a Buddha and the heart of a scorpion.” The third is awfully spoiled, she’s an opera singer who’s still looking good but the husband tires of fulfilling her every want. Songlian wasn’t going to play this warfare game but she gets pushed too far and can’t help but join in. It’s sort of a game of survival, they start to “need” the husband to come over every night. The ones who did got special gifts, first they get a foot massage and the next day they get to choose the dinner plates. They all become spoiled one way or another and fight for their nights.

As if the movie needed more emotion, the cinematography really added on. The main color is red, we see the white snow during the most intense scenes though. The story is sort of slow but we get more into the characters’ life and emotions, why they do what they do. When the intense scenes happen, I really didn’t want to watch but the colors just emphasize so much.

We never see them leave where they live, it gives off this eerie feeling of a prison; they just sit around all day plotting and hoping he chooses them that night. Seems they have nothing else to live for. How far can they take things? For a man they don’t even love? Things get really messy though, one ends up dead and another insane.