This 2004 film, directed by Yong Hou, was just 'ok' for me. Stars that Chinese 'it' girl, Zhang Ziyi, doing her usual bland acting (this girl is lucky she is beautiful) and the amazing, Joan Chen, who like Michelle Yeoh in Geisha steals every scene she's in from Zhang. The thin storyline runs from the 1930s through to the mid-1980s following Chen and Zhang as they morph through 3 sets of daughters/mothers/grandmothers (an interesting concept yes).
Yong Hou directs well and there are a couple memorable scenes ... strongest in the 1958 vingette when Zhang wanders the streets while the students march. A second when, after Zhang's husband commits suicide by stepping in front of a train (which was all her fault I might add), Hou films her walking toward a train that veers last second to a sidetrack. I had problems with the end of the film. When Grandma Chen dies, Hou gives us three bad cliches in a row: the burning of the 1930s pin-up picture of Chen as an actress beside her corpse; Grandma's bed collapsing by itself; and the dead hand dropping the perfume bottle. OMG, com'on please! Worse is yet to come as Zhang, her water broken at 3am stumbles out into empty Beijing streets (in teeming rain, of course) and not being able to find either 1) a taxi?! ... com'on, there's 20 million people in Beijing and even at 3:00am, or 2) a living soul to assist her. And why didn't she just call before heading out?
My rating: 6 out of 10.
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