Get Your Reps In: “Farewell My Concubine” Returns in Glorious 4K

Farewell My Concubine (1993)

You’d be hard-pressed to find a film covering more historical tumult than Farewell My Concubine, a deeply felt blurring of the line between art and performer. Director Chen Kaige’s masterwork follows two Chinese opera performers—played by Leslie Cheung and Zhang Fengyi—over nearly 50 years as they fall in and out of love, prominence and purpose.

It’s been a long road for Farewell My Concubine’s 4K restoration. Though the film was lauded on the international festival circuit, the Chinese government initially banned (and then recut) it due to its gay protagonist and depiction of the Communist Party during China’s Cultural Revolution. And for its U.S. release, Harvey Weinstein chopped 20 crucial minutes.

Yet Farewell My Concubine can now be seen as intended—expansive, wounded and epic, with an immersive and mythological sense of the characters’ predestination. Cheung and Zhang’s characters were born to play their roles in the titular opera, and they’ll live it through the final note. Cinema 21, Oct. 13-15.

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