Ju Dou

Ju Dou is set in rural China in the 1920s. An aging, wealthy dye-mill owner named Yang Jinshan buys a young peasant woman, Ju Dou, to be his wife, hoping she will give him a son. He is unable to father a child but refuses to accept this, and he takes his frustration out on her. Tianqing, his nephew, works at the mill and witnesses her suffering. He tries to comfort her, and the two begin a secret relationship. When a child is born, Jinshan believes it is his own, so Ju Dou and Tianqing must hide the truth from him and from the surrounding community.

The film is a drama directed by Zhang Yimou, the second of the twenty-five features he has directed in chronological order, following Red Sorghum and preceding Raise the Red Lantern. Liu Heng wrote the screenplay, adapting his own novella. Gong Li plays Ju Dou, with Li Wei as Yang Jinshan, Li Baotian as Yang Tianqing, Niu Xingli, Jia Zhaoji and Zhang Yi in supporting roles. It was produced by China Film Co-Production Corporation and Xi'an Film Studio, with Wenze Zhang, Hu Jian and Yasuyoshi Tokuma as producers.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.6 from roughly 9,600 votes, and on TMDB it has a 7.2 from 188 votes. A critics' rating of 8.3 from 25 reviews places it somewhat above those audience scores. At 95 minutes, it is a compact drama whose reputation rests on the strength of its central performances and its restrained portrayal of a rural household bound by secrecy.