Farewell My Concubine
“The passionate triangle of two lifelong friends and the woman who comes between them!”
Chen KaigeCast
Leslie Cheung Zhang Fengyi 
Gong Li
Credits
Written by: 
Pik-Wah Lee
Plot
Two boys, Douzi and Shitou, train together at a Peking opera school and become stars, one playing heroic male roles and the other female ones. Over fifty years, from the 1920s through the Japanese occupation, the civil war and the Cultural Revolution, their friendship is tested by a woman, Juxian, and by the political upheavals. Chen Kaige's 1993 film shared the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
Sinekatalog’s take
Two Peking Opera performers bond across decades of Chinese upheaval. Chen Kaige's epic is sumptuous, tragic and politically daring, with Leslie Cheung unforgettable.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.
Ratings
IMDb: 8.1 / 10 (37,868 votes)
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset (October 2026). Scores change over time.
If you liked this
Picked by director, genre, era and shared cast. Titles only, no spoilers.
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