He Saifei brings an opera performer’s vocal and expressive precision to women who have little freedom to act. We rate her most for making their calculations understandable, even when the behaviour is difficult to forgive.
Fi1m perspective
In Raise the Red Lantern (1991), He Saifei’s Meishan has good reason to want an advantage over the other women in the household. He makes the effort to secure it absorbing. Beside Gong Li’s Songlian, she gives Zhang Yimou’s drama a rivalry in which neither woman can simply afford to be generous. It is a fine supporting performance, and a substantial part of why a film built around such punishing rituals remains so involving.
Her beginnings in Yue opera matter here because precision of voice and expression helps her distinguish women whose lives are tightly controlled. The opera film Five Daughters Offering Felicitations (1984) preceded the supporting period roles that became a recurring part of her screen work from 1991. Meishan is herself an opera singer, so Zhang’s casting draws on something He knows from practice. The performance earns its place through the household competition, rather than relying on that useful match between actor and role.
We felt uneasy watching Meishan compete for favour, because He made the need to secure it so understandable. The women’s behaviour can be harsh, but the performances keep reminding us that nobody’s position is enviable. Zhang’s rigid compositions occasionally press the point about their confinement harder than necessary; He and Gong give us particular people to follow within them. Their work keeps the drama from becoming only a demonstration of how this household harms its women.
Her subsequent work includes the lead as Xiao’e in Li Shaohong’s Blush (1995), then parts in Chen Kaige’s Temptress Moon (1996) and Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (2007). Wives, concubines and, elsewhere, mothers and aunts have occupied much of that career. There is a limitation in the casting here: the same sorts of women keep coming round. We would be wary of mistaking repeated employment in such roles for proof that those are all she can play.
Off the Stage (2022) gives her a lead as Ms. Qi, a dedicated but flawed opera star, and brings her practical experience directly into the subject of the film. It is a welcome reason to look beyond the familiar supporting parts, without dismissing what she has achieved in them. Start with Raise the Red Lantern, and resist the temptation to sort its women into the decent and the cruel.
Biography
He Saifei is a Chinese actress and Yue opera performer specialising in dan roles. She joined the Daishan Yue Opera Troupe in 1982 and later performed with the Zhejiang Xiaobaihua Yue Opera Troupe, becoming a disciple of Zhang Yunxia. She first gained attention for her role in the 1984 Yue opera film Five Daughters Offering Felicitations.
Internationally she is known for film roles including Meishan in Raise the Red Lantern (1991), a part in Temptress Moon (1996) and Mrs Hsiao in Lust, Caution (2007). She has worked extensively in Chinese film and television while maintaining her opera career.
