In this sumptuous and groundbreaking romantic epic, forbidden love blossoms on a lush jungle island in modern China. It’s a place of haunting beauty and centuries-old customs, at once a liberating Eden and a repressive backwater. Li-Ming (played by the stunning Mylene Jampan) is an orphan, sent to intern with a renowned medicinal botanist (Dongfu Lin), who has cultivated his jungle acres into a vast greenhouse pharmacy. But while Li-Ming disappoints her unforgiving teacher time and time again, she forms an instant bond with his shy daughter, An (Chinese TV star, Li Xiaoran). On her own side of the island, An exposes Li-Min to the secret world of roots, plants, tinctures and potions, and opens her up to her own lost and lonely soul along the way. Li-Min is captivated, and the affair that ensues is at once giddily innocent and erotically electric. Romantic idyll is threatened, however, when An’s macho military brother (Wang Weidon) comes swaggering back home. With tender lyricism, director Dai Sijie captures the emotion of this taboo love affair with precious few words and a treasure-trove of intoxicating images: an illicit sexual rendezvous on a mossy jungle bridge; a nude encounter in a steam-bath of hallucinatory herbs.

Likewise, the two lead actresses lay bare the women’s building love through quiet gestures, shared secret looks and charged, physical touch. But what’s truly revolutionary is the film’s unflinching depiction of modern China’s enduring patriarchal and homophobic repression, which will leave American audiences – both women and men – outraged and shattered. In this world, the gravest threat comes from two kindred spirits who dare simply to love.

Career Synopsis

Dai Sijie was born in China in 1954. In 1984, he left China for France on a scholarship. In Paris he acquired a passion for movies and became a director. His previous films include China, My Sorrow (1989) Le mangeur de lune (1994) and The Eleventh Child (1998). He also wrote and directed an adaptation of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, released in 2002. He lives in Paris and writes in French.