`Farewell My Concubine' Latest Film To Explore World Of Sexual Ambiguity - A First For China

The first Chinese film to deal openly with gender confusion, Chen Kaige's "Farewell My Concubine" fits right into the cinematic climate created by "Orlando," "The Crying Game," "The Ballad of Little Jo" and "M. Butterfly."

"I'm pretty happy about the comparisons," said Chen from New York City, where the movie played the New York Film Festival earlier this month. Co-winner of the top prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, it opens Friday at the Metro Cinemas.

"It's good to have a film from China be part of this discussion," said the filmmaker, who speaks excellent English. "Culturally, I think we've been far away, behind other countries, for so long, and it's interesting that these films are dealing with this at the same time.

"I don't know, perhaps something is going to happen in the new century with sexual identity. Society must be more open if you really want to know who you are."

The story of a male Chinese opera singer, Cheng Dieyi, who is raised to identify with women and impersonate them on stage, "Farewell My Concubine" is based on an early-1980s novel by Lillian Lee that takes place between 1925 and 1977.

In the early scenes, the hero is an attractive boy who is forced to chant, "I am by nature a girl, not a boy." Seduced by a male patron, he falls in love with his heterosexual stage partner, who marries a prostitute and denounces him for his homosexual "crimes" during the Cultural Revolution.

Throughout the film, Chen focuses on the hero's right to an identity that is questioned during severe political upheavals. In his New York Times review, Vincent Canby wrote that the movie's "treatment of the homosexual Dieyi is sympathetic to the point of being deeply romantic."

"I'm not gay, but I identified with this character," said Chen. "I loved being with him, trying to understand him. It's not really a film about gays; it's about an artist who is trained as a female. You can approach it from several levels. You'll know something about me when you see it."

Familiar with controversy

Chen's 1990 autobiography, "My Life and Times with the Red Guard," concentrates on his experiences as a teenager between 1965-'70. Born in Beijing in 1952, he was raised by a newspaperwoman who encouraged his interest in literature and a filmmaker father who was denounced during the Cultural Revolution as a counter-revolutionary traitor.

He attended Beijing Film Academy along with Zhang Yimou, who photographed Chen's first film, "Yellow Earth" (1984), before going on to establish himself as China's best-known director with the Oscar-nominated "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Ju Dou." Both of those films starred Gong Li (who gives a typically riveting performance as the wife/prostitute in "Farewell My Concubine").

Nevertheless, it was "Yellow Earth" (which makes its videocassette debut Nov. 10) that became China's breakthrough movie, drawing international attention to the country as a filmmaking center.

Criticized by the Chinese government because it exposed the poverty and backwardness of a Chinese village, "Yellow Earth" led to another run-in with the government this summer, when "Farewell My Concubine" was banned because political leaders were unhappy with its treatment of homosexuality, suicide and prostitution.

"The film bureau had approved the script, and they were quite supportive," he said. "It was a different group that didn't want it."

Shortened scenes

Cuts were made for the Chinese release (which was ultimately successful at the box office), but that is also true of the American version, which is 14 minutes shorter than the 169-minute version that won at Cannes. Chen said he cut no complete scenes, but shortened several episodes. One of the bits that got left out: the killing of a turtle "because it might be too much for U.S. audiences."

Chen regards "Farewell My Concubine" as primarily a love story. So is "Yellow Earth," which deals with a peasant girl who falls for a soldier and flees from an arranged marriage. And so is his next film, "Shadow of a Flower," which he plans to shoot in Shanghai beginning in January.