Jasmine Women

The film tells the story of three generations of women living in Shanghai. The account moves not backwards from the youngest but along a pattern that repeats across the generations: the same mistakes, the same expectations and the same abandonments come round again in each one. In the end it is the granddaughter who breaks the cycle, and that is where the film puts its real weight. The changing face of the city is not the background of the story but the thing that decides what is open to these women. The account does not judge the women for their mistakes; it shows the conditions that pushed them into those mistakes. Zhang Ziyi and Joan Chen appear in Hou Yong’s hundred and thirty minute Chinese film, completed in 2004.