The Banquet

As beautiful as she is young and as limber as she is smart, Empress Wan (Ziyi Zhang) can launch a thousand ships with her charm and fight a hundred soldiers with her sword. But something is lacking in her life. Unfulfilled in her royal boudoir, she harbors forbidden desires for her stepson Wu Luan (Daniel Wu), an introverted and melancholic young man four months her senior, who shies away from the palace to indulge in the ancient art of music and dance. When the Emperor dies all of a sudden and his virile younger brother Li (Ge You) succeeds the throne, Wan shocks everyone by agreeing to marry Li, convinced that this is the only way to protect Wu Luan while sealing her own position in the court. But Li is no fool. However infatuated he might be with his sister-in-law, he only pretends to buy into her scheme in order to consummate his lust. Oblivious to Wan, he has dispatched his underlings to off his nephew. Already devastated by his father’s death and stunned by his stepmother’s...