The story is primal, and so are Zhang’s cinema strategies.

Ju Dou isn’t as luridly explosive as “Red Sorghum,” the previous Zhang Yimou-Yang Fengliang movie released in this country; it’s not as mad as that film. But, in its own dampened fashion, “Ju Dou” is true to its own depravity.

Visually stunning, with ravishing uses of color and beautifully modulated lap dissolves...

Ju Dou transforms erotic melodrama into political tragedy, using colour, sex, and cruelty to expose how authoritarian systems reproduce themselves through fear and bloodlines.