Rating: NR
Genre:
Drama
Release Date: 12/10/2002
SubTitles: English
Dubbed: Mandarin
Run Time: 180 Minutes
Distributor/Studio: Tai Seng
An influential
martial arts film and an acknowledged influence on
Ang Lee's amazing
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,
King Hu's
A Touch of Zen opens with young scholar
Ku Shen-chai working at his portraiture stand in a small frontier town. He lives with his nagging mother in a supposedly haunted, rundown house at the edge of the abandoned
Ching Liu estate. One day, a stranger named
Ou-Yang Yin asks for his picture to be painted, and then suddenly leaves. Soon, another stranger -- this time a beautiful woman named
Yang Hui-Ching -- suddenly moves into the complex next door. The presence of these strangers has an increasingly unnerving effect on
Ku, and he rightfully comes to believe that the entire town is involved in some bizarre political intrigue. After a night of passion between
Ku and
Yang,
Ou-Yang Yin stages a surprise attack on the compound, which
Yang surprisingly thwarts with dazzling aplomb.
Yang reveals to him that her father was an honorable general executed due to the nefarious doings of the powerful
Eunuch Wei. With the aid of
General Shih and
Lu (who pose as the town's blind beggar and herb vendor respectively),
Yang was spirited away first to a monastery where she learned martial arts and then to
Ku's remote corner of China.
Ou-Yang Yin,
Eunuch Wei's henchman, has in turn vowed to pursue her to the ends of the earth. As
Ou-Yang Yin rallies
Wei's army to the walled estate,
Ku -- having spent a lifetime researching military history -- devises a brilliant strategy to crush the siege and win the heart of this most unusual woman. Though his plan works, he fails to win the loyalty of
Yang; she flees into the night as
Ku slept. After searching desperately,
Ku finds her in the same monastery where she learned kung-fu. Now a Buddhist nun, she hands over their child to him and sends him packing. Realizing that
Ku is in danger,
Yang and her mentor -- a saintly abbot -- then set out to protect him. Suddenly out of nowhere,
Hsu Hsien-Chen -- the profoundly evil army commander of
Eunuch Wei -- confronts the abbot and an all-out battle between good and evil ensues. Screened at
the 1975 Cannes Film Festival and winning a technical prize, this was the first Chinese language film ever to win a major western film festival award.
~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
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