Director: Stanley Kwan
Country: Hong Kong
Award: none
Movement: Hong Kong New Wave
Based on “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow”, a highly popular 1995 Chinese novel by Wang Anyi, “Everlasting Regret” follows the story of Qiyao, from the mid-40s to the 80s, through an approach that also takes into consideration the intense sociopolitical changes Shanghai underwent during the time, which remain though, in the background. The story is told through the perspective of a photographer, Cheng, who is introduced to Qiyao by her best friend Lili, who seems to have feelings for him. Cheng, however, is immediately smitten by Qiyao's beauty, asking to photograph her, and eventually urging her to participate in the local beauty pageant, where she ends up winning. As soon as she does, she walks away from a respectable pre-arranged marriage and becomes the mistress of officer Li, a higher-up of the Nationalist regime, enjoying a rather luxurious life for the next few years. The rising of the communists, however, strips Li from all his power. Several years later, Qiyao is in a relationship with Ming, the son of a rich industrialist, and even gets pregnant with his child. His family, however, lose all their property and leave for Hong Kong, and she is left alone once more. Her life continues in the same pattern, with her partners either dying or abandoning her, with the only constant in her life being Cheng, who never stopped loving her.
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