Long Live the Mistress

With a scenario by Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing), one of the most popular Chinese writers, Long Live the Mistress represents a stream of witty, sophisticated domestic comedies that was later taken up in the Hong Kong and Taiwanese cinemas but which largely disappeared from mainland filmmaking after 1949. Jiang Tianliu, plays Chen, a woman with a weak, unfaithful husband. Even after the husband takes on a mistress, Chen is obedient and helpful to her husband’s family. When fortune unexpectedly smiles and the husband suddenly becomes successful in business, his mistress grows more demanding—so Chen helps her husband figure out a way to send her packing. —Film Society of Lincoln Center