Ironically, some may view this startling film, shot months after the Tiananmen Square uprising and massacre, as a retreat from the groundbreaking cinema of China's "Fifth Generation" filmmakers, for its deceptive preoccupation with what Western critics have dubbed a Postman Always Rings Twice-like "erotic tale of forbidden passion." But Ju Dou's daring lies in its filmic sensuality, through which it seizes and reveals the myths and reality of Chinese "inscrutability" and "self-enclosure" for the hidden millions inside China. Ju Dou can justifiably be seen as a real leap forward, subversive in its relentless exposures. At first glance the picture unfolds like an "Oriental" scroll, sumptuously contained, frame by frame; yet Ju Dou is filmed like a Li Po poem: lightning quick flashes of brilliance, evocative colors, "voyeuring" through another dimension. The telescopically shot interior landscapes show bodies and souls battling to burst through the silk canvas, which is all the while unravelling like the billowing bolts of natural cloth in the dye factory in which the film takes place, circa 1920. What's natural isn't natural. Adultery isn't the crime, love is. Zhang intensifies the metaphorical theme erupting in recent Chinese films like Yellow Earth and Girl from Hunan, where a woman's blossoming sexuality challenges the repression around her. Ju Dou's final liberating act of rebellion is to face reality and destroy it. --Vicci Wong