Farewell My Concubine

“The passionate triangle of two lifelong friends and the woman who comes between them!”

Two boys, Xiao Douzi (Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing) and Xiao Shitou (Zhang Fengyi), are drilled side by side in a Peking opera school, learning to sing and to fight. As adults they become Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou, the stage's most celebrated pair, until Xiaolou marries Juxian (Gong Li). Chen Kaige follows them from the early Republic to the years after the Cultural Revolution, and Dieyi stays in costume and makeup, the concubine's role still on his face.