आलोचक समीक्षाएं

Ju Dou is a juicy and stylish potboiler that keeps the pilots turned on full blast.

The film appealed to me for two reasons. First, because of its unabashed, lurid melodrama, in which the days are filled with scheming and the nights with passion and violence. Second, because of its visual beauty.

Ju Dou is far richer and more jolting than "The Postman Always Rings Twice," which it suggests. When it comes to film noir entrapment, we have nothing on the Chinese. [05 Sep 1990, p.63p]

Even if it were not physically beautiful -- and Ju Dou is as enthralling to look at as any Chinese film the festival has shown -- it would hold you: Its love story is as compelling as its politics, though not nearly so tragic. [05 Feb 1991, p.D8]

The gifted Zhang Yi-mou directed this gripping and colorful drama, which mingles beauty and perversity in equal proportions. [15 Mar 1991, p.12]

Visually stunning, with ravishing uses of color and beautifully modulated lap dissolves, Ju Dou may not be the most formally striking Chinese film I’ve seen...but it certainly is the most effective and dramatic in terms of commercial moviemaking, both as spectacle and as story telling.

Directed by Zhang Yimou, a maverick of China's "new wave," this disturbing tragedy is as unexpectedly lurid in its way as "Blue Velvet."

The picture is a rip-roaring melodrama, a tale of lust, murder and revenge, rendered in broad strokes and vibrant hues that make Hollywood Technicolor look almost timid. [12 Apr 1991, p.C]

Ju Dou is an intellectually and artistically brave film. Asking for dramatic power and psychological depth as well may be expecting too much.

What makes the film worth seeing anyway is the brazen richness of the production. It's as if the filmmakers, closed off from making even a suggestively sensual experience, threw their energies into the colors and textures of their people's lives. [06 Mar 1991, p.F7]