Pavilion of Women (2001)

Some things I liked some I did not.

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Willem was totally wasted here, as were quite a few of the cast. I think that's why he wasn't up to his usual mark, I suspect he was aware of the 'we're gonna dumb down to rock bottom levels on this one!' attitude that prevailed in this production.I suspect he really needed to pay some bills.The musical score was woeful, really hideous.It was filmed beautifully, all wasted.What was with the voices? It seemed like Mr Wu and friends were badly dubbed with crassly exaggerated US accents.I accepted that it wasn't going to be as poignant as the book. Whenever an American movie of this type puts 'adapted from' on anything, it always means 'light years away from', and you know it's going to be an immature travesty. Yup, it was.It could still have been great, even with the story changes, but it was so clumsily executed, with such a heavy hand on everything. The characters were made into caricatures, and the ending was a very strange thing. It was like a bad outfit, where you just say, ''what were they thinking?''.I thoroughly enjoyed all the costumes, and would give a kidney to live in that house with that garden. All the stone and stunted pine had me drooling. Just goes to show how much you can enjoy a good set, when the movie is immature pap, being spoon fed to the mob.Even, so, if it had been treated properly, it could have been a much better film, even as it was. If Merchant-Ivory had done this, it would have been a stunner.

Good god has no one read the book? It talks of a woman who wakes up on her fortieth birthday determined to break herself free from her duties to her family but without hurting anyone. This sets off a series of events she had not foreseen and does not know how to tackle. All this is set in a period when China was changing. It is a brilliant story of spiritual awakening. And what have they done to it?The missionary and the lady never even touch each other before he dies. In fact she doesn't even know that she loves him until that point. The son does not settle down with his father's concubine. And the woman does not turn communist, but becomes free in the true meaning of the word.It just beats me how any one could dare to call this movie by the name of the book. Blasphemous!

Having read the entries in the IMDb forum, I was really looking forward to watching this movie--what a disappointment! The movie's cast was mainly Chinese but apart form the very last scene (3 years later) and the banquet scene I could not see anything Chinese in it. Everyone seemed to be talking all the time, rather like in an American movie.And why does everyone have to speak English? Don't they speak Chinese in China? Not even the pictures were just marginally as powerful as in most Chineese films I have watched.As the end credits rolled across the screen I realized--Pearl S- Buck. Well, I stopped reading Pearl S.Buck when I was 13 as I couldn't see any challenge in her books. They rather depict the "good old days" the way they never were.

Anyone who liked Zhang Yimou's "Raise The Red Lantern" is a prospect for "Pavilion Of Women". Whereas "Raise The Red Lantern" explores the breaking of merely Chinese cultural taboos, "Pavilion Of Women" centres on a romance between leading characters who flout both Chinese and Western mores. This is a cross-cultural romantic story by the prolific American writer on China, Pearl S. Buck, set in the late 1930s. It has first class cross-cultural direction and acting, and was filmed on location in elegant settings of old Suzhou. It is a fine example of what the Chinese film industry can achieve in co-production.