Gong Li makes women under pressure feel occupied with urgent decisions rather than resigned to suffering. We value her ability to make us understand the need for an advantage, even when we dislike what securing it involves.
Fi1m perspective
In Raise the Red Lantern (1991), Gong Li makes us understand why Songlian needs to win the next encounter with another wife. There are four women competing for the master's favour, and finding an advantage becomes a task that cannot wait. Zhang Yimou gives the household's rituals frightening weight, but Gong keeps each individual decision clear. The discomfort comes from recognising how sensible an unpleasant choice can seem to the person making it.
Cinematographers Lun Yang and Zhao Fei place the women within still, symmetrical views of the household, sometimes so rigidly that the point about confinement is overemphasised. We felt trapped by those ordered images because the women seemed so precisely contained within them. Du Yuan's patient editing gives their dealings time to become suspenseful, and Gong rewards that patience by making us worry about what each encounter might cost Songlian. He Saifei's Meishan helps sustain the rivalries; Gong's performance works within a cast that makes competing needs understandable.
The partnership began with Gong's debut in Zhang's Red Sorghum (1988), and her reputation grew through Ju Dou (1990) and To Live (1994). It is worth remembering how much the actor contributes before crediting the director with every uncomfortable feeling these films produce. Her first major role outside that partnership was Juxian in Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine (1993), a useful reminder that her career was already developing beyond Zhang during those years.
From the mid-1990s, her work broadened into Hong Kong and Hollywood productions, with Hatsumomo in Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) among the Hollywood roles. Some of those parts give her too little character to develop, as in Shanghai (2010). Her return to Zhang in Coming Home (2014) involved changes of appearance and manner across decades of a character's life. Start with Raise the Red Lantern, and give its domestic rivalries time to become thoroughly uncomfortable.
Biography
Gong Li is a Chinese actress. She trained at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, graduating in 1989, and made her screen debut in Zhang Yimou's Red Sorghum (1988).
She is known for her frequent early collaborations with Zhang Yimou, including the roles of Songlian in Raise the Red Lantern (1991) and Juxian in Farewell My Concubine (1993). Other notable films include To Live (1994), 2046 (2004), Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) and Mulan (2020). She became a Singaporean citizen in 2008.
