An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty (1984)

Apparently the full version of this film is near 3 hours long, but the Celestial dvd presents us with a 97 minute cut - which presumably explains why the plot seems to leap tall buildings between scenes and lack a certain amount of coherency. It seems to be a rather feminist tale dressed in lots of female nudity, a paradox that puts it in the company of Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan, with which it also shares some lucious set design and cinematography. The film actually looks, sounds and feels more like a japanese film than a HK film in many places. I wish Celestial had managed to dig up the full length cut, as there's no doubt the film loses a lot from being so severely shortened. It's probably an excellent film in its full length.

The Celestial DVD also has disappointing picture quality - lots of grain and some distracting brightness fluctuations in some scenes. They probably figured people only wanted to see it for the nudity anyway...