I am writing from Bucharest, Romania, a country which had its share of communist experience, hence my take on this movie is heavily influenced by it.
So, I believe this is another PCC request to which the movie industry had to abide, this time illustrating the PCC policy regarding the integration of the rural population into the cities, Shanghari to be exact.
As in other movies set in the present times that I watched with great pleasure, the writer and the director do a stellar job with getting past cernsorship ideas I could not believe were possible to air.
Yes, the main protagonists are two female characters: one is the Shanghai born, financially succesful bitch, while the other is her sister in law, the good girl from outside the city, who married into this Shanghai family which exploits her work with no sign of thanks or recognition.
However, as the story progresses, not so are the two female protagonists who, in spite of their trials and tribulations, prove in the end to stay as they were in the beginning.
The real gem is that this movie adds layers and layers of parallel stories, illustrating the same idea: that marriage, be it fake or for real, works as a main vehicle for assending to the coveted status of Shanghainite, with one of the parallel stories taking a more dramatic turn, very much like in John Braine's "Room at the Top".
The real bummer are the last 30 minutes or so in the last episode, when the writer and the director team rush towards an ending which is counter to the whole previous development. But I take it, if that is the price to pay to go past censorship the previous hundreds of minutes of sheer brutal realism.
The acting of the Chinese actors is so good, at no matter what size of the role, that it aches. One feels like wanting to die and be reincarnated into one of them.
Very good are the male actors Feng Shao Feng and Zhang Song Wen, who, in their supporting roles could have fallen off the horse, but managed not to. The first had a very challanging linear and somewhat clinically depressed character, while the other was in charge with providing the comic relief.
To both of them, cudos, for walking on such a narrow path and yet providing rounded and powerful characters.