$3 million+ (Italy)、$2 million+ (France) [4] Raise the Red Lantern is a 1991 Chinese period drama film directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Gong Li.
It is an adaptation by Ni Zhen [zh] of the 1990 novella Raise the Red Lantern (originally Wives and Concubines) by Su Tong.
In fact, the master decides on a daily basis which wife he will spend the night with; whomever he chooses gets her lanterns lit, receives the foot massage, gets her choice of menu items at mealtime, and gets the most attention and respect from the servants.
She also has to deal with her personal maid, Yan'er (Yàn'ér, played by Kong Lin), who hates her and dreams of being married after a few brief flings with the Master.
Zhuoyun, however, is in league with Yan'er who finds and reveals a pair of bloodied undergarments, suggesting that Songlian had recently had her period, and discovers the pregnancy is a fraud.
Doctor Gao (Gao-yisheng, Cui Zhigang), who is secretly having an illicit affair with Third Mistress Meishan, examines Songlian and determines the pregnancy to be a sham.
Songlian, who had briefly attended university before the death of her father and being forced into marriage, comes to the conclusion that she is happier in solitude; she eventually sees the competition between the women as a useless endeavor, as each woman is merely a "robe" that the master may wear and discard at his discretion.
On her twentieth birthday, severely intoxicated and despondent over her bitter fate, Songlian inadvertently blurts out the details of the love affair between Meishan and Doctor Gao to Zhuoyun, who later catches the adulterous couple together.
The following summer, after the Master's marriage to yet another concubine, Songlian is shown wandering the compound in her old schoolgirl clothes, appearing to have gone completely insane.
Raise the Red Lantern has been distributed on VHS, Laserdisc and DVD by numerous different distributors, with many coming under criticism for their poor quality.
The website's critical consensus states: "Visually thrilling and rich with emotion, Raise the Red Lantern offers an engrossing period drama anchored by an outstanding performance from Gong Li".
[21] However, there were a small number of negative reviews: Hal Hinson of The Washington Post, for example, stated that "the story never amounts to much more than a rather tepid Chinese rendition of "The Women.
[20] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times gave the film four out of four stars, praising its screenplay, actors, and visuals; there he concluded as thus "There is a sense in which 'Raise the Red Lantern' exists solely for the eyes.
The film's popularity has also been attributed to a resurgence in Chinese tourism after the government response to the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989, due to its use of exotic locations.