A sweet and sorrow legend of love in ancient China. But this version I think was not the best Butterfly Lovers.

I thought the movie was very good, and give it very good. But I give the performance of Charlie Yeung far more than that. She totally inhabits the character. It's not a performance (and I don't even like using the word "performance") that hits you straight away. It creeps up on you. People have spoken about crying over a beautiful piece of music. That is how Charlie's performance affected me. But it was more after the movie, than during it. But tears of joy. it's not powerhouse acting, but a kind of spiritual transcendence. okay that's probably going overboard, but I'll leave it there. It's hard to think of every performance. Sometimes that word has to be used. But I believe this to be my favourite. So some other thoughts on the movie. This is the second Chinese movie/hong kong (i t might have been a shaw brothers movie) I've seen where the girl disguises herself as a guy. In the first one, i thought the other characters must be blind not to notice she's a girl. I thought the same about this one. But perhaps it's a convention of these movies. Finally I thought the movie should have ended with her beautiful final words to him. I thought the afterlife scene was totally unnecessary. But thank you Charlie for your gift.

Imagine a time in China - Eastern Jin dynasty, about 300-400 AD - when women were not allowed to enter the universities and were to follow the rules of obedience and adapt to hierarchies within their own family, in addition to the hierarchy between different social classes.In this context we find our wealthy female protagonist, Ying Toi, a cheerful yet clumsy girl with a great deal of energy and imagination. After testing her skills in poetry recital, calligraphy and zither playing, the parents decide that she must be educated in a university, or else they won't be able to marry her off. Ying Toi is told to impersonate as a male in order to be accepted to the university, and promise her mother not to reveal her female characteristics. She leaves her home together with a convoy of servants, a little sad at first, but soon realizing the adventure she is about to commence.Following the arrival to the school, Ying Toi unexpectedly meets Shan Pak, the central male character. He is quite poor but studies hard and has an excellent resilience. They quickly become close friends, and spend much time together. In the process, Ying Toi falls in love with Shan Pak, but are unable to expose her true identity. When Shan Pak leaves the university and goes home after completing his studies, Ying Toi is devastated.However, when she receives a request from her parents to come home, she makes the most of the opportunity and get together with Shan Pak again. Finally, Ying Toi is able to openly reveal her female identity and express her love for him. He affectionately reciprocates her love and the loving couple decides to get married. The only problem: Ying Tois parents have already promised her hand to a powerful and rich potentate named Ma, making a tragic end to this love story inevitable … As my preceding description of the storyline in this movie may have indicated, the first part of the movie is a romantic and amusing comedy, and the second half a heart-racking tragedy (although with a hopeful end). This combination of laughter and tears, representing the bittersweet characteristics of love, is one of the reasons why I regard this movie as the most precious in my life.I have without doubt learned more about the essence of love from this film than from any other. And maybe it's not so surprising when having in mind that it is influenced by a very old Chinese legend, "Liang Zhu", much loved in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.The music is just beautiful, enhancing the events of the movie and embedding it in a dreamlike aura. Sometimes the music alone can make you feel like your floating in a state of infatuation, or mourning a tragic situation with much sorrow and tears. Most of the music in the movie is based on the "Butterfly Lovers Concerto", composed by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao in 1958. Like the legend itself, this concerto is highly beloved in the Chinese speaking world.I also have to mention the spellbinding interaction between the main actors: they really seem to be in love. As for the rest of the ingredients in the movie, such as scenery, clothing etc, the only thing I can say is that it creates an authentic atmosphere which makes you feel like you really are transported back to ancient China.

The Butterfly Lovers is a Chinese legend about the tragic romance between two lovers, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, or Liang Zhu, from whom the name of the legend is known in Chinese. The story is set in the Eastern Jin Dynasty.Zhu Yingtai is an intelligent but lazy girl who is born into a wealthy family. She was to be married off to the son of the Prime Minister, but her parents found that she was unable to recite poetry or play the guzheng (a minimum requirement for girls born of nobility). Her mother thus sent her to a college disguised as a boy.Now when Yingtai is enrolled in the college, she is given certain special privileges by the principal's wife who knew her mother (her mother studied there). This was because, Yingtai had sworn 3 oaths before entering the college (see the film for those).Yingtai met Liang ShanBo, an industrious but poor man who was studying to sit for the national exam. (In those days, to become an official, you had to sit for a national exam, these were based on poetry, the teachings of Confuscious, etc). They developed a strong bond (which causes Shan Bo to feel that he might be homosexual) with each other, and Liang ShanBo did not realise that YingTai was a girl, till the fateful meeting with his ex-classmate who had become a monk.It turns his ex-classmate was Yingtai's mother's former lover, and she gave him up so that she could marry a rich and powerful official.Yingtai's father called her back after 6 months so that they could arrange the wedding with the son of the Prime Minister, but before she sets off, she asks his classmate, Ting Mong Chun to pass a message to Shan Bo that she had to leave. They met again, and in the Goddess of Mercy cave, she chose to be his better half.The story ends in tragedy, because both lovers could not be together in life, but in death they were side by side.The chemistry between Nicky Wu and Charlie Young is almost flawless. The comic elements in the show help to ease the sad endings, but when it comes to the end, grab your Kleenex tissues.