I’ve seen this before, but not in something like twenty years. What I remembered from it was mostly vibes: The soundtrack, people Luigi-jumping over rooftops, and a swordfight in a bamboo forest. The characters? The story? Not much.

So it turns out that this is a story about the way that women shape their lives in a society that circumscribes their choices — there’s Jade Fox, who fights against the limits and is beaten down by them and made bitter; there’s Michelle Yeoh, who carves out a role as far on the limit of acceptability as she can but who ultimately accepts some limits; and there’s the young noble girl who extremely does not want to live the life her parents want her to live, and who is torn between the guidance of these two would-be mentors.

It’s also a surprisingly — well, it’s Ang Lee, so not that surprisingly, I guess — complex movie, with a lot of things hinted at (although the one thing that I remembered being hinted at — the unconsummated relationship between Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat — is actually stated very directly upfront, and it’s only the characters themselves who are coy about it) and a structure with flashbacks that are so long and extensive that they barely seem to count as flashbacks at all.

I remembered loving this movie back in the day, and was curious about whether it holds up; I think it does, and if anything is better than I remembered.