Pearl Buck, America’s most famous missionary, lived in China from her childhood to the age of 32. During the next fifty years of her life, she wrote more than eighty-five books, receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938, though her books were banned in China until 1994 because she once criticized the acting ability of Madame Mao. Buck’s continuing aim in writing was to show the folly of race prejudice. Among the novels that carried out her purpose was Pavilion of Women (1946), which director Ho Yim has now brought to the screen. Set in Giansu province, the film begins in 1938, when Madame Wu (played by Yan Luo) has decided at the age of 40 that she is tired of serving her autocratic rich husband (played by Shek Sau). Among the duties that she most eschews after twenty-six years are the nightly massage and blowjob. Accordingly, she arranges for her husband to take on a second wife, a concubine, though first wives generally do not want to be eclipsed, and concubinage is illegal. In the background of the film, thus, is the fact that the Nationalist Chinese government exercises little authority; indeed, the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in 1931 has already indicated to men in the film that the rest of China is vulnerable to conquest. A matchmaker appears at her request, and an orphan from the country (played by Yi Ding), is selected and named Chiu Ming. Meanwhile, Wu wants his oldest son, Feng Mo (played by John Cho), to receive a foreign education before his inevitable arranged marriage, so Madame Wu summons Father André (played by Willem Dafoe), an American missionary with medical training who runs a nearby orphanage; Father André earlier saved the life of Madame Wu’s best friend (played by Amy Hill). Although Madame Wu offers to pay Father André to be a tutor, he declines; if there is to be compensation, he prefers food and clothing for the orphans. Thereafter, several love relationships emerge to complicate life for the Wu family. Madame Wu falls for Father André, Feng Mo has designs on Chiu Ming, and Wu is so displeased with the service provided by Chiu Ming that he visits the local brothel, that is, the pavilion of women. As a foreigner, Father André brings many strange attitudes and customs to bear in his interactions with the family, especially when he gains two new pupils—Madame Wu and Chiu Ming. Accordingly, Pavilion of Women reveals how Chinese culture places much value on face and family, with men dominant over women except for Wu’s matriarchal mother (played by Anita Loo). At the same time, most Chinese in the film seek liberation from certain customs that have guided the world’s oldest civilization. Madame Wu wants to be liberated from being her husband’s sex slave. The young concubine seeks liberation from poverty but resists becoming Wu’s new sex slave. Wu, in taking on a concubine, defies Chinese law. Feng Mo, to avoid an arranged marriage, joins the Communist army. And all China wants liberation from the Japanese. Nevertheless, the Japanese in due course arrive to occupy the town, whereupon Wu takes his servants upcountry. But his two wives prefer to remain under Japanese occupation, and Father André is shot trying to defend them. At the end of the film, three years later, Feng Mo returns in a Red Army uniform as a part of the force liberating Madame Wu, Chiu Ming, and the rest of the townspeople. Filmed in China, where imperial flags of Japan were evidently unavailable, Pavilion of Women has only been released to art theaters in the United States, doubtless because of the slow pace and silly propaganda spliced onto the end of a much better book. Clearly, the intention of the joint Universal Focus-Beijing Film Studios production is to be a commercial success among more than a billion potential patrons in China. MH