Gorgeous looking epic that's a little too heavy on melodrama and treats the historic events as mere backdrop for the personal upheavals of the 3 heroines. Directed by Mabel Cheung, the film features Maggie Cheung, Vivian Wu and Michelle Yeoh as the three famous sisters. The actors are dubbed for the most part (movie was shot in Mandarin).

Even though I found the movie slightly disappointing, I'd nevertheless recommend it, if only because greater familiarity with the historic events and personalities depicted here (forming of the Chinese Republic by Sun Yat-Sen, conflict between Nationalists and Communists, etc.) is an important aspect of understanding references/themes that reoccur in many HK movies. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't give this more than a cursory and rather superficial treatment (the fact that the movie was heavily censored by the Communist authorities probably didn't help either).

Mabel Cheung makes it quite obvious that the 3 sisters are supposed to represent the 3 Chinas. Michelle (she has a rather small role) plays the materialistic older sister who marries a rich banker and moves to HK. Maggie Cheung plays the idealistic middle sister who marries Dr. Sun and becomes a Communist icon. And Vivian Wu is the power-hungry youngest sister, who marries Chiang Kei-Shek and becomes the First Lady of Taiwan. Despite the best efforts of the actresses, these characters remain rather lifeless, because of the week script that merely moves them from one historic tableau to another. Some of these tableaus are impressively staged, but they feel oddly lifeless and without the energy and drama befitting such momentous events in China's history. Moreover, the script stays mostly on the surface - we don't really get to see what these people think, why they choose certain directions, what drives and motivates them. And to be honest, when it comes to a movie using three actresses to symbolize the three China's, I'd rather watch Heroic Trio...

That being said, the movie does look very good. Mabel Cheung certainly knows how to make pretty pictures, and perhaps you can't really do this one justice unless you watch it on the big screen. Marginal recommendation.