The 5 best films of Gong Li, Chinese actress in the spotlight, starting with Red Sorghum, her debut feature and that of its director, Zhang Yimou

Gong Li made her feature film debut in Red Sorghum in 1987, the first in a string of Zhang Yimou productions to earn international acclaim
Once criticised for taking foreign nationality, a touchy subject of late with Chinese nationalists, Gong’s recent roles pale in comparison to her early ones

Chinese language cinema

Elaine Yauin Beijing

Published: 7:15am, 30 Sep 2021

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Gong Li shot to fame in 1987 in the romance Red Sorghum, set during the second Sino-Japanese war and the first Chinese film to win the Golden Bear, top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.

From then until the mid-2010s, she and the film’s director, Zhang Yimou, collaborated on some of the best movies in the history of Chinese cinema, until China’s tightening censorship brought Zhang to heel.

Zhang cast Gong in films that both captured Gong’s beauty and offered searing critiques of Chinese patriarchy and the political suppression of the common people.

Like other Chinese stars holding foreign passports, the 55-year-old actress has recently faced renewed scrutiny in China. When television host Yang Lan raised the subject of her foreign nationality with Gong in an episode of her talk show in 2009, the actress said it was her personal choice to be a Singaporean – the nationality of her then husband.

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Gong’s later films pale in comparison to her early works and she hasn’t had a memorable role in the past decade. These are her five best films, from good to great.

5. The Story of Qiu Ju (1992)

Gong plays rural woman Qiu Ju, whose husband suffers a groin injury in a dispute with a village chief. He refuses to apologise. Despite being pregnant, Qiu ventures to the city to lodge a complaint with the municipal authorities. The village chief is eventually imprisoned for 15 days.

The film shows the dogged simplicity of ordinary people and the absurdity of officialdom.

4. Ju Dou (1990)

The first Chinese production to be nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign language film, Ju Dou is a romantic tragedy that offers a lacerating critique of China’s patriarchy and the feudal values of the early 20th century.

Gong plays the young and beautiful bride of the cantankerous and sadistic owner of a dyeing works in rural China. Her infidelity with the factory owner’s compassionate but cowardly nephew leads to a series of tragedies.

Gong in Red Sorghum, her feature film debut.

3. Red Sorghum (1987)

Adapted from a novel of the same name by Nobel-winning writer Mo Yan, Red Sorghum marked the feature film debuts of both Zhang and Gong. Set in a sorghum liquor distillery during the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s, the film shows humanity at its most extreme, featuring rape, massacres, and the Japanese aggressors ordering that a man be skinned alive.

Gong plays the flinty owner of the distillery, which produces a red liquor from sorghum. Her rapist, played by Jiang Wen, may have killed her husband, the distillery’s original owner – a man who had leprosy. Gong’s love affair with her rapist injects vitality into an otherwise solemn film about the atrocities of war.

The film is a visual feast in which the colour red, from the alcohol to a bridal sedan chair, offers a contrast to that of naked human flesh and the yellow and green of the sorghum fields.

2. Raise the Red Lantern (1991)

The second Chinese film to be nominated for an Academy Award, and winner of the British Academy of Film and Television’s award for best foreign language film, Raise the Red Lantern portrays the evils of China’s former patriarchal society, in which women were nothing more than men’s playthings.

Gong plays Song Lian, the beautiful fourth concubine of a rich man in a household where a burning red-orange lantern is hung in front of a concubine’s chamber before the patriarch’s nightly visit. Song loses her mind after losing a fight with her fellow concubines for her husband’s affections.

The lantern is a symbol of hard-won male attention, and the film makes a powerful attack on the feudal values of old China.

1. To Live (1994)

Adapted from a novel of the same name by Yu Hua, To Live depicts scenes from the life of a couple, played by Gong and Ge You. Set in the decades from the 1940s to the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, the film reflects the many tragedies of contemporary Chinese history, including the Great Leap Forward and the abolition of private property.

Because of its sensitive content, it never received a cinematic release in China.

Like grass-roots people throughout Chinese history, the couple’s resilience as they endure multiple political upheavals and family deaths shines through.