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Review

Filmed in striking primary colors, this folktale and political allegory is an erotic tale of tangled passions between two lovers and the bitter consequences of their forbidden love. Set in a small village in 1920s China, a rich and tyrannical middle-aged man operates a cloth dye works. He has just recently married his third wife, Ju Dou, a young beauty who, like the others before her, is brutalized and degraded by her impotent husband. She soon falls in love with her husband's hardworking but simple nephew. Their illicit affair and illegitimate child soon has the town ablaze with gossip; especially after an accident leaves her husband paralyzed, allowing the couple to take over the factory, silence her incensed husband and brazenly display their affair. But fate is not kind to the obsessed lovers in this dramatic tale of oppression, desire and vengeance. (Mandarin with English subtitles)