Cao Cuifen makes outwardly gentle women worth watching closely. Her unshowy work in Raise the Red Lantern gives its household rivalries a personal bitterness, and remains our strongest reason to seek out her performances.
Fi1m perspective
In Raise the Red Lantern (1991), Cao Cuifen gives Zhuoyun, the Second Mistress, a gentle manner that does not make her easy to read. Small changes of expression do the work; Cao has no need to advertise the character's complexity. We were unsettled by how readily we understood her resentment, because she makes the grievances within that punishing household recognisable. This is supporting acting that deserves close attention, in a film we recommend without hesitation. Even when the repeated rituals press their point too hard, Cao keeps us interested in the woman living by those rules.
Supporting parts through the 1970s and 1980s came before the 1991 breakthrough. She later took the lead as a rural woman in Gu er lei (Orphan Tears) (1995), while her career came to combine occasional films with extensive television work. The continuity is an unshowy interest in everyday behaviour, particularly in domestic and social dramas. That suits an actor whose strongest effects can come from a face rather than a speech.
Zhang Yimou gets particular value from that restraint in Raise the Red Lantern. Gong Li's first close-up establishes an individual before the surroundings can dominate; Cao and He Saifei, playing Meishan, keep the rivalries rooted in particular grievances. There is a danger that such carefully arranged drama will reduce its women to examples of how a household works, and these performances resist it. Cao lets us understand Zhuoyun without asking us to excuse her, which is more useful here than making her either agreeable or simply unpleasant.
Her later television work includes Old Madame Sheng in The Story of Ming Lan (2018) and Grandmother Fan in Joy of Life (2019). These elder roles mark a later emphasis on authority, though her international reputation still rests heavily on Raise the Red Lantern. That is a reason to be cautious about treating one performance as an account of everything she can do. For a first encounter, choose Raise the Red Lantern and pay attention to who makes its smaller disputes matter.
Biography
Cao Cuifen is a Chinese actress. She trained at the Beijing Film Academy, entering the preparatory programme in 1960 and the undergraduate course in 1962, though her studies were interrupted by the Cultural Revolution; she returned in 1973.
She made her film debut in the mid-1970s and is known for her performance as Zhuoyun in Raise the Red Lantern (1991). Her other credits include Love is Not Blind (2011) as Aunt Zhang, The Story of Ming Lan (2018) as Old Madame Sheng, and Joy of Life (2019) as Madam Fan. She has received several Chinese film and television awards, including a Golden Phoenix Award and a Feitian Award.
