New 4K Restoration!

Nineteen-year-old Songlian, a promising student whose family has been destroyed by her father’s death, is forced to abandon her studies and marry into wealth, becoming the fourth and newest concubine of the aging, unseen Master Chen. Inside his walled estate, she discovers a household ruled by a merciless ritual: each night, red lanterns are lit outside the chambers of whichever wife the master chooses to visit, granting her privilege and status while the others are cast into cold irrelevance. Songlian is drawn into the orbit of her rivals, each shaped by years of fighting for the same scraps of attention. Determined at first to rise above the games, Songlian is gradually worn down by isolation and humiliation until she strikes back, trading secrets and favors to secure her place in Master Chen’s hierarchy. As petty cruelty turns even more dire, Songlian is forced to confront what these desperate measures will cost her soul.

“As visually striking as it is dramatically effective,” Zhang Yimou’s Academy Award-nominated Raise the Red Lantern sumptuously captures 1920s China while “subtly exploring the politics of power and control” (Janet Maslin, The New York Times). One of international cinema’s greatest stars of the era, Gong Li is “nuanced and understated” (Chicago Reader) as the stifled young woman forced into a repressive world of concubinage. Newly restored, the film stands as one of the defining works of Fifth Generation Chinese cinema and international film of the 1990s. – Film Movement

“Critic’s Pick! A beautifully crafted and richly detailed feat of consciousness-raising and a serious drama with the verve of a good soap opera…. [A]s visually striking as it is dramatically effective.” – Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“A Chinese film of voluptuous physical beauty and angry passions.” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“Gong Li delivers a performance of exquisite expressiveness that, like the film itself, is unnerving in its emotional nakedness.” – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

“Raise the Red Lantern is breathtaking.” – Desson Thomson, Washington Post