In the context of oriental cinema, it's a good film... but it's very different from the cinema that we, in the West, are used to, and this difference ends up killing our interest in this work.
I think this movie was the first Chinese movie I saw, I'm not really sure. I am not an expert on the cinema of this country, but I can say that it is one of those films that you see without much special interest. Of course, I'm talking about the standard audience, because there are really oriental film lovers who will be more interested in this material.
The script is based on the story of Song Lian, a very young and well-formed girl who, after her father's death, is coerced into finding a rich man to marry. She ends up being the fourth wife of a man, having to live with the other wives and learn how to behave in a complex family system, where rivalries and envy are part of everyday life.
The film shows us a type of family life that, for us in the West, is far from being understandable. It could only take place in strongly patriarchal societies, where the role of women is more than subordinate. It's not a great film, but it's frankly decent, and I don't rule out the likelihood that it's a classic of Chinese cinema (experts will opine better).
Gong Li does a very good job in the role of the young Song Lian, and is very well supported by Saifei He, Cuifen Cao, Lin Kong and Qi Zhao. Jingwu Ma doesn't do an inferior job either, in the role of the patriarch and husband of all those wives. The cinematography is very good, as are the costumes and sets, which take us back in time and geography. What prevented the film, perhaps, from being a greater success in the West was the lack of publicity and the difficulty in adapting to the environment of the film, which is very different from the cinema that Hollywood usually exports: it is much more meditative, passive and depressive than most of the cinema we used to see.