Bawang Bieji (Farewell to my Concubine) by Chen Kaige has rightly attracted a lot of international attention. The film is set within the traditional Chinese Opera of Peking. With verve and conviction, life in the opera is brought to life and we see how art has to keep adapting to meet the demands of new rulers. The great interest in Chen’s film has awoken curiosity in Hong Kong about an earlier film version of the same story.More than twelve years before Chen, the young television director Alex Law filmed the story, scripted by Lik Bik Wah, on which Chen was also to base his work. Law did not have very much experience when he made his version and he only had a modest budget for his television film. As a result the opera scenes are much less spectacular than in Chen’s much more expensive production. But it wasn’t just the money that made Law’s version much more sober than that of Chen. The novice Law manifests himself here as a talented and tasteful director who underscores completely different things in the story. Chen focuses on the enormous contrast between the artificial glitter world of the opera and the harsh historical and political reality outside the androgynous glamour of Chinese theatre. Law stresses the simple and beautiful story of a friendship that lasts for decades between Ching Dear-Yi and Shao-Lo, performers of male and female roles.
