Farewell My Concubine
さらば、わが愛／覇王別姫
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Fifty years of Peking opera, one man in the concubine's role who cannot leave it offstage.
Peking, 1924. Douzi, the son of a prostitute, is left by his mother at Master Guan's Peking opera school, where the boys are trained through beatings. Another boy, Shitou, protects him. Douzi is trained for female roles and keeps getting one line wrong, saying he is by nature a boy, not a girl, until at last he says it right. A friend who ran away with him takes his own life after the punishment that follows. When the troupe performs at the house of an old eunuch, Zhang, the eunuch sexually abuses Douzi. On the way home the boys find an abandoned baby, whom the school takes in.
Grown up, they are the stars Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou, famous for the opera Farewell My Concubine: Dieyi plays the concubine who dies for her king, Xiaolou the king. Dieyi loves Xiaolou. A rich patron, Master Yuan, courts Dieyi and gives him the sword Shitou once promised him. Xiaolou marries Juxian, a headstrong prostitute who has bought her own freedom, and Dieyi feels betrayed.
History breaks in. Under the Japanese occupation Dieyi sings for Japanese officers to get Xiaolou released; after the war the Nationalists try him as a collaborator. Juxian loses a baby. Dieyi sinks into opium and, with Xiaolou and Juxian beside him, gives it up. After the Communist victory Yuan is executed, and the foundling, Xiao Si, now Dieyi's pupil and a zealot of the new order, takes his role from him.
In the Cultural Revolution the Red Guards parade the troupe through a public struggle session. Under pressure Xiaolou denounces Dieyi, exposing his opium habit and his relationship with Yuan; Dieyi denounces Juxian as a former prostitute; Xiaolou swears he never loved her. Juxian returns the sword to Dieyi and takes her own life.
Eleven years later, after the fall of the Gang of Four, Dieyi and Xiaolou rehearse Farewell My Concubine together again. Teasing, Xiaolou recites the old line, and Dieyi makes the old mistake. When the opera reaches the concubine's death, Dieyi takes his own life, as she does. Xiaolou cries out his name, then softly calls him Douzi.
Starring
Leslie Cheungas Cheng Dieyi (Douzi)
A Peking opera star famous in the concubine's role, who has loved his stage partner since they were boys.
Cheng Dieyi (Douzi)’s story
Douzi is left at the opera school by his mother, a prostitute, and Shitou is the boy who protects him. Trained to play women, he keeps getting a line wrong until at last he says it right; when the troupe performs at the house of an old eunuch, Zhang, the eunuch sexually abuses him. As Cheng Dieyi he becomes famous as the concubine and loves Xiaolou, whose face he makes up before every performance. When Xiaolou marries, he turns to their patron, Master Yuan. He sings for the Japanese to free Xiaolou, is tried for it after the war, and sinks into opium. His pupil takes his role. Denounced by Xiaolou in the Cultural Revolution, he denounces Juxian. Eleven years later, rehearsing the old opera, he makes the old mistake, and when the concubine dies, he takes his own life.
Zhang Fengyias Duan Xiaolou (Shitou)
Dieyi's stage partner and protector since boyhood, who plays the king and marries a prostitute, Juxian.
Duan Xiaolou (Shitou)’s story
Shitou is the older boy at the opera school who protects Douzi, and he promises him a sword one day, as the king would give his concubine. As Duan Xiaolou he plays the king to Dieyi's concubine but treats him as a younger brother, and he marries Juxian. Arrested for confronting Japanese soldiers, he is freed because Dieyi sings for them. After the war he pleads with Master Yuan to save Dieyi from a treason charge, and with Juxian he sees Dieyi through his opium withdrawal. When Xiao Si takes Dieyi's role, Xiaolou plays opposite him. Paraded before the Red Guards, he denounces Dieyi and swears he never loved Juxian. Eleven years later, rehearsing with Dieyi again, he teases him with the old line, and when Dieyi takes his own life, he cries his name, then softly calls him Douzi.
Gong Lias Juxian
A prostitute who buys her own freedom to marry Xiaolou and becomes Dieyi's rival for him.
Juxian’s story
Juxian buys her own freedom from the brothel and becomes the wife of Xiaolou, who promised on an impulse to marry her. From the start she and Dieyi are rivals for him. When the Japanese arrest Xiaolou, she asks Dieyi to help free him. She loses a baby in the turmoil after the war, and still she and Xiaolou see Dieyi through his opium withdrawal. In the Cultural Revolution, paraded with the troupe, she hears Dieyi tell the Red Guards that she was a prostitute, and hears her husband swear that he never loved her. She gives the sword back to Dieyi and takes her own life.
Ge Youas Master Yuan
A wealthy opera patron who courts Dieyi, gives him the sword, and is executed after the Communist victory.
Lei Hanas Xiao Si
The foundling raised by the troupe and trained by Dieyi, who turns on his teacher under the new regime.
Why it matters
Farewell My Concubine shared the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1993 with The Piano and remains the only Chinese-language film to have won it. At home it was pulled from cinemas after two weeks and banned; after an international outcry, and with China bidding for the 2000 Olympics, it returned in a censored version, with scenes of the Cultural Revolution and of homosexuality cut and the ending softened. Chen Kaige, who as a young man denounced his own father during the Cultural Revolution, drew on that experience. The film follows two men through half a century in which every regime demands a different performance, and asks what is left of a person underneath. Its most painful question belongs to Dieyi: whether a boy raised to play a woman who dies for her king can ever step out of the role. Leslie Cheung later regretted that the love at its heart was treated largely as subtext.