Directed by Kaige Chen | 171 mins | 1993
Art and life become inextricably entwined in Chen’s gorgeously arrayed triumph of costume and production design: an epic spanning 50 years of 20th-century Chinese history in the life of a troupe of Peking opera actors based on the 1985 Lilian Lee novel, and a landmark of Fifth Generation Mainland cinema, notable for being the first Chinese film to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Cheung stars as the orphaned Dieyi, trained to play dan (female roles), his unrequited adoration of frequent male co-star Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) remaining a constant through the disruptions of war and political turmoil, up until the film’s startling, cathartic climax.