Pavilhão De Mulheres

I could not believe how lousy this film was and I tried to think why. Well its co-made by China and a United States film studio and I think thats where the trouble lies. Its americanized. No original angle or aspect into the chinese people. All the characters are one dimensional and act on the most basic of emotions. Only actress Luo Yan has a few decent moments but the rest is all hokey nonsense. It plays out like a mediocre mini-series and I kept expecting one of two things to happen. Either Richard Chamberlain was going to stumble in OR the characters were going to burst into song and sing "Getting to Know You". The last half hour is so overly dramatic that it puts daytime soaps to shame. Bad filmmaking!

Anyone who liked Zhang Yimou's "Raise The Red Lantern" is a prospect for "Pavilion Of Women". Whereas "Raise The Red Lantern" explores the breaking of merely Chinese cultural taboos, "Pavilion Of Women" centres on a romance between leading characters who flout both Chinese and Western mores. This is a cross-cultural romantic story by the prolific American writer on China, Pearl S. Buck, set in the late 1930s. It has first class cross-cultural direction and acting, and was filmed on location in elegant settings of old Suzhou. It is a fine example of what the Chinese film industry can achieve in co-production.

Beautiful but, modernized a bit to it's detriment; and likely to Pearl Buck's grave chagrin.

The story and set behind Pavilion of Women were grist for a powerful movie. It's about an American priest (Willem Dafoe) running an orphanage in Asia who becomes entangled with a proud Chinese family's tugs of war over love and duty. While Pavilion is engaging enough to keep you awake, it didn't project any of the majesty of greater love-versus-duty romances that come to mind. Its characters cried, but not amid enough conveyed tragedy for its viewers to join in sympathy. Dafoe seemed to absorb his role, but not wholely, for soft-spoken and even-keeled as Dafoe can be, the priest in this movie would have been better portrayed by someone as unknown in the U.S. as the movie's Chinese cast members, whose anonymity aided their credibility and certainly carried the show. There are several wonderfully intense scenes that might even take you back to a love-struck moment in your past. The cinematography gave me pans of the city and garden life now and then, but it left me wishing it had lingered on Asia's beauty and austerity long enough to arouse a connection in me with these people living in 1930s China.

I wouldn't say give it a swerve, because the performances of the local cast was often great. But neither would I recommend making it a late-night movie, if you want to see it before nodding off.

Somehow I always feel that Willem Dafoe and the films he starrs in are drastically underrated. It is also the case for this exceptional movie set in pre-comunist China. A simple, touching story about tradition and the constrains that it sometimes brings.

The plot outline is simple. When Ailin turns 40, she decides it is time to retire from her husband's bed, the rich Mr. Wu. In order to do so, she finds a second wife, a woman that would take her place and pleasure the oral-sex-obsessed Mr. Wu. But the young new wife has trouble adapting to her role and the old pervert is not satisfied with her. Meanwhile, Ailin befriends her son's teacher, an American priest named Andre (Willem Dafoe). From here on, the story develops in various directions but I don't want to spoil it for you.

Very good acting and directing on a classical subject.