This touching movie is about what may be the best loved figure from Idaho history. Her ranch, now a members only recreational club, is just over 40 miles from where I'm writing this. The movie takes considerable license with the actual facts of Polly Bemis' life, but that is seldom the point of a fictionalized movie based on a novel that is based on a true story anyway. Much of this movie winks and nods at the history, but packages what there is of it into a very charming and moving portrayal of the difficulties of life for Chinese immigrants on the Idaho frontier, not on the cattle producing prairies, but in the gritty gold mines of Warren and Florence in the mountains of 19th century Central Idaho. The Chinese Exclusion Act caused much upheaval and misery among the Chinese immigrants as was depicted in the movie, in which the Bemises were caught up. (spoiler alert) Although the movie ends just as life is beginning on the Main Salmon River in Central Idaho, much of the charm of Polly Bemis' life that has made her such a beloved figure in Idaho history had yet to occur. That might be a good idea for another movie to follow up this one.

Although I haven't seen this since it was on TV over fifteen years ago, its memory came and struck me again tonight right out of the blue while I was eating dinner. I was so supremely impressed with this at the time I saw it on PBS that I have no trouble now remembering the title immediately, along with the names Rosalind Chao and Chris Cooper, even after all these years. So, I just had to come here now while I'm thinking of it and register my approval.If this were available on DVD, I'd buy it today. But it seems to me that what America really needs, entertainment-wise, is an American Playhouse anthology on DVD. If The American Film Theatre can put out a fourteen-volume anthology (in three sets), and if we can get "Fifty Years of Janus Films" in one giant collection, why not American Playhouse?

I wish this fantastic film were available on DVD. I own the VHS and find it more compelling with each viewing. Rosalind Chao and Chris Cooper ( who later went on to win an Academy Award) give topnotch performances and make me believe in the power of love and redemption. Their slowly building relationship in a hostile world and its low-key but very powerful denouement is a textbook in fine acting.The historical period has been covered before but never from the point of view of a Chinese immigrant woman. Lalu's courage, strength and intelligence as well as her sensuous exotic beauty are inspirational. As Charlie, Cooper gives a fine portrayal of a decent if flawed man who triumphs in the end. A real classic!

A gorgeous and very intelligent movie. Highly unusual to make a western from the Chinese point of view, also to make one from the woman's point of view.These people do it without sentimentality; there's never a false note in it. Lalu has three strikes against her: an ethnic Mongol in China, a woman in a male culture, a Chinese in America. Yet she can draw on her warrior traditions forb a sense of pride inaccessible to most of her compatriots.The relationships she gets into seem totally real; at the same time, there is no attempt to cover up the ugly reality of white racism (not that the Chinese men are much better than the Americans).This is how the old west must have been, and this movie gives us an honest and dramatic portrayal. It deserves to be much better known.