An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 10, 2025

The recently reviewed Her Body made the perhaps debatable assertion that "female empowerment" could include working in the porn industry, and if that thesis might seem farfetched at least to some, perhaps incredibly that film was based on a true story. There was no "porn industry" per se during the Tang Dynasty, but that's not to say people's libidos weren't just as frenetically active as they are in our hypersexualized world, and An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty is arguably a "historical" take on "female empowerment" leading to some unusual "career" choices, and, like Her Body, this story has at least roots in a real life personage. Yu Yuan Gi (Patricia Ha), the focal and titular (and considering some of this presentation's soft core ethos, yes, one can hear Beavis and Butthead snickering, "He just said titular") character of the film, is based on a real life woman whose name is also transliterated as Yu Xuanji. What's kind of interesting, and probably salient, in this regard is that evidently very little is actually known about Yu's life, and as such she's become almost a mythic character of sorts. That perhaps helps the character in the film to serve as a symbol for all sorts of anachronistic (at least for the time period) behaviors "for a woman".

Perhaps somewhat hilariously, if simultaneously indicative of just how anachronistic Yu was, the real life legend (an intentional oxymoron) includes the tidbits that she was known for being both a courtesan and a nun, with an evidently openly bisexual nature, which, considering her penchant for writing poetry, might associate her somewhat with another "real life legend", Sappho. That "nun" part may be somewhat misleading, since evidently historical Chinese "nuns" were of the variety you might see in, say, The Devils, but even so, Yu's life was seemingly a rather provocative set of adventures, and this film, while vignette driven, documents a number of interchanges Yu has with both men and women.

As the back cover of this release alludes to, An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty came at the veritable tail end of the Shaw Brothers' major big screen productions, and you can see their obvious attempt to kinda sorta mimic the Japanese pinku eiga idiom, while also providing something akin to their ostensible calling card, a historical epic (albeit this time without much "action" in the non sexual sense).

An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 88 Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. The back cover of this release states this is an "HD transfer from the original negative". Though made at the end of the Shaw Brothers' long feature film reign, there's still a nicely lush production design on hand, and at least when characters are actually wearing clothes, fine detail on things like fabric textures are precise looking. The palette is quite nicely suffused virtually the entire way through, though there a few somewhat odd looking moments that are a bit on the dowdy brown side, most of which tend to be outside, for whatever reason. Some low light material can look pretty rough (see screenshot 8), but on the whole clarity is commendable and grain resolves without any issues.

An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty features LPCM 2.0 Mono in Cantonese, though as so often is the case with many Shaw Brothers efforts, it appears that at least some actors may have been post looped, so there can be occasional "loose sync". The track is secure in every other way, though, with a nicely robust midrange that helps to support scoring and the occasional sound effect. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by Journalist David West


• Alex Man on An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty (HD; 21:24) is another great interview culled from the Fred Ambroisine archive.


• Trailer (HD; 1:13)


• Stills Gallery (HD; 2:58)

Additionally, the keepcase features a reversible sleeve and encloses a folded double weight and double sided poster. Packaging features a slipcover.

An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is a rather interesting Shaw Brothers production, one that was clearly made to try to capitalize on a certain prurient sensibility, but which also clearly had more "traditional" historical epic ambitions. The result is not always completely cohesive or convincing, but there's some obviously provocative content here that should entice some. Technical merits are generally solid and the supplements appealing. Recommended.