Word: dou
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Sometimes people don't notice a good movie until somebody bad steps on it. To Western eyes, Zhang Yimou's Ju Dou might seem to be just another pretty retelling of a familiar triangle: a young woman, her elderly husband and her lover. Ju Dou plays like Phaedra mixed with The Postman Always Rings Twice -- until the woman bears a son who grows ripe with vengeance, and the movie becomes a bitter Bad Seed...
...after Ju Dou was nominated for a foreign-film Oscar last month, the Chinese authorities insisted that it be withdrawn from consideration. (The Motion Picture Academy rejected the demand.) Nor have the Chinese allowed the film to be shown publicly on the mainland, though it has played to acclaim elsewhere in the Far East and in Europe. Suddenly, this spare melodrama acquired political significance. Zhang, 40, whose previous film, Red Sorghum, made him the brightest light of emerging Chinese cinema, became both an international cause celebre and a man without a local audience. "To get Ju Dou past the censors...