"A radical departure from the elegiac period imagery of (Zhang's) Ju Dou andRaise the Red Lantern. Gong Li plays the title heroine, a simple farmwoman inNorthern China who goes on a rampage of justice-seeking when her husband isbeaten up by a local prefect. She drags her case to an endless hierarchy ofindifferent legislative offices, meeting stone walls of bureaucracy andindifference at every turn. The film becomes a quixotic mixture of desperatedrama and black comedy as she eventually attains her objective, but at aninevitable price of humanity°. Zhang takes us on a journey through present-dayChina that is at once documentary-like in its depiction of life in thecountryside as well as the teeming cities, and deeply affecting as human drama°.Gong Li°here transforms herself from the flowerlike courtesan of Raise the RedLantern into a veritable Asian Mother Courage°"-David Noh, The Film Journal