You don’t have to enjoy Beijing opera to enjoy Mei Lanfang. Chen Kaige’s biopic of the eponymous operatic star makes its remote and receding world entirely accessible and colorful to contemporary audiences. Nonetheless, it does call for a bit of patience. The film’s main conceit is that its protagonist, a legend in the public eye, leads something of a timid, taciturn existence in private. However accurate this may be, it results in a story that itself ends up all too timid and plodding in parts.
