The best Gong Li’s drama movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Gong Li’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Gong Li.
Mulan
5.8/10
When the Emperor of China issues a decree that one man per family must serve in the Imperial Chinese Army to defend the country from Huns, Hua Mulan, the eldest daughter of an honored warrior, steps in to take the place of her ailing father. She is spirited, determined and quick on her feet. Disguised as a man by the name of Hua Jun, she is tested every step of the way and must harness her innermost strength and embrace her true potential.
Memoirs of a Geisha
7.3/10
A sweeping romantic epic set in Japan in the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.
Curse of the Golden Flower
7/10
During China's Tang dynasty the emperor has taken the princess of a neighboring province as his wife. She has borne him two sons and raised his eldest. Now his control over his dominion is complete, including the royal family itself.
2046
7.4/10
Women enter and exit a science fiction author's life over the course of a few years after the author loses the woman he considers his one true love.
Farewell My Concubine
8.1/10
Abandoned by his prostitute mother in 1920, Douzi was raised by a theater troupe. There he meets Shitou and over the following years the two develop an act entitled "Farewell My Concubine" that brings them fame and fortune. When Shitou marries Juxian, Douzi becomes jealous, the beginnings of the acting duo's explosive breakup and tragic fall take root.
Raise the Red Lantern
8.1/10
China in the 1920s. After her father's death, 19 year old Songlian is forced to marry the much older lord of a powerful family. With three wives already, each living in a separate house within the great castle, there is fierce competition for his attention and the privileges that are gained. This competition gets out of hand...
Eros
5.9/10
A three-part anthology film about love and sexuality: a menage-a-trois between a couple and a young woman on the coast of Tuscany; an advertising executive under enormous pressure at work, who, during visits to his psychiatrist, is pulled to delve into the possible reasons why his stress seems to manifest itself in a recurring erotic dream; and a story of unrequited love about a beautiful, 1960s high-end call girl in an impossible affair with her young tailor.
Chinese Box
6.2/10
The story of Hong Kong, from New Year's Day to June 30th, 1997, when the British left their colony and turned it over to the People's Republic of China.
Shanghai
6.3/10
An American man returns to a corrupt, Japanese-occupied Shanghai four months before Pearl Harbor and discovers his friend has been killed. While he unravels the mysteries of the death, he falls in love and discovers a much larger secret that his own government is hiding.
Shanghai Triad
7.1/10
Shanghai, China, 1930. When young Shuisheng arrives from the countryside, his uncle Liushu puts him at the service of Bijou, the mistress of Laoda, supreme boss of the Tang Triad, constantly threatened by his enemies, both those he knows and those lurking in the shadows.
To Live
8.3/10
Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry.
Coming Home
7.2/10
Lu and Feng are a devoted couple forced to separate when Lu is arrested and sent to a labor camp as a political prisoner during the Cultural Revolution. He finally returns home only to find that his beloved wife no longer remembers him.
Flirting Scholar
7.6/10
A scholar in search of true love. Disguising himself as a houseboy, he indentures himself to a rich family in order to pursue the ravishing servant girl who has stolen his heart.
The Story of Qiu Ju
7.6/10
When her husband is kicked in the groin by the village head, Qiu Ju, a peasant woman, despite her pregnancy, travels to a nearby town, and later a big city to deal with its bureaucrats and find justice.
Ju Dou
7.6/10
A woman married to the brutal and infertile owner of a dye mill in rural China conceives a boy with her husband's nephew but is forced to raise her son as her husband's heir without revealing his parentage in this circular tragedy. Filmed in glowing technicolour, this tale of romantic and familial love in the face of unbreakable tradition is more universal than its setting.
Hannibal Rising
6.1/10
The story of the early, murderous roots of the cannibalistic killer, Hannibal Lecter – from his hard-scrabble Lithuanian childhood, where he witnesses the repulsive lengths to which hungry soldiers will go to satiate themselves, through his sojourn in France, where as a med student he hones his appetite for the kill.
Red Sorghum
7.3/10
An old leper who owned a remote sorghum winery dies. Jiu'er, the wife bought by the leper, and her lover, identified only as "my Grandpa" by the narrator, take over the winery and set up an idealized quasi-matriarchal community headed by Jiu'er. When the Japanese invaders subject the area to their rule and cut down the sorghum to make way for a road, the community rises up and resists as the sorghum grows anew.
Leap
6.6/10
After 12 years, the Chinese women's volleyball team again reached the Olympic final. The ups and downs of the Chinese women's volleyball team for more than three decades have slowly spread away.
Temptress Moon
6.7/10
Set in the decadent 1920s, Temptress Moon tells the very complicated story of a wealthy family living on the outskirts of Shanghai. Their youngest daughter, Ruyi, is brought up as a servant to her opium-addicted father and brother. Meanwhile, her brother-in-law Zhongliang has a successful, if illegal, career seducing and blackmailing married women in the city. When he comes to Ruyi's home the two fall in love, and trouble ensues.
Breaking the Silence
6.9/10
Gong Li stars in this low-key drama about a single mother who will do anything to provide for her son. Sun Liying (Li) struggles to care for her hearing-impaired child Zheng Da (Gao Xin) after her taxi driver husband divorces her. After Zheng Da gets his hearing aid smashed in a fight with classmates, Sun Liying sets out to raise 5,000 yuan (a small fortune) to buy him a replacement. A friend helps her set up an unauthorized bookstall, which soon gets raided by the police. Later she splits her time delivering newspapers and cleaning house for a rich businessman. This film was screened at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival.
