Songlian (Gong Li) is poor but beautiful and marries a rich man as his fourth wife. Moving into his compound, she is forced into a delicate balance of spite and protocol among the other three, competing for attention and luxuries.
You can read this movie as anti-patriarchy and anti-Maoist. The wives are kept isolated, powerless in every real sense, and so devolve into vicious in-fighting to gain favor from the Master. He is fully aware and in some senses encourages this until it inconveniences him or makes him look bad. They are also each from a different sector of society: 1st wife is nobility, 2nd wife is mercantile, 3rd wife is the arts, and 4th is scholars. All of which were summarily crushed in the Cultural Revolution.
It's a really neat perspective that the Master is never fully shown. He is always filmed from the back, behind a curtain, or in a long shot, never a close-up. Because he is completely unimportant to the story. He could have been replaced by a different actor in every scene and you probably wouldn't notice. The wives, however, are richly dressed in vibrant colors that pop from the bland surroundings. Their inner lives are just as prominent, hopes and fears on display in every interaction. It's a surprising choice for 1991 but Yimou has demonstrated a sense of equality in all his films.
Unfortunately, the only way to watch it is YouTube so the video quality isn't great, but it's the full movie with English subtitles. It's a fascinating film and I recommend it.
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