General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Temptation of a Monk (诱僧)

Temptation of a Monk (诱僧; Cantonese Yale: Yáuh Jāng; pinyin: Yòu Sēng) is a 1993 Hong Kong period film directed by Clara Law, adapted from the novel of the same name by the Hong Kong writer Lilian Lee (李碧华), with a screenplay by Eddie Fong and Lee and starring Joan Chen and Wu Hsing-kuo¹. Set in early Tang dynasty China, it follows a general who is drawn into the plot that kills the crown prince he guards, takes refuge as a Buddhist monk, and is pursued both by the new emperor's soldiers and by a woman sent to seduce and kill him². The film was nominated for the Golden Lion at the 50th Venice International Film Festival and was promoted as the first Hong Kong film officially entered for that festival³.

Key fact	Detail
Original title	诱僧 (You Seng), English title Temptation of a Monk⁴
Director / screenwriters	Clara Law; screenplay by Eddie Fong and Lilian Lee, from Lee's novel¹
Producer / production	Teddy Robin Kwan; Tedpoly Films, with Golden Harvest credited as production company⁴^•⁵
Cast	Joan Chen, Wu Hsing-kuo, Zhang Fengyi, Michael Lee, Lisa Lu⁶
Runtime / language	118 minutes; Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin versions)⁴^•³
Hong Kong release	23 October 1993; premiered in Canada on 15 September 1993⁷
Festival and awards	Golden Lion nomination, 50th Venice International Film Festival (1993); 7 nominations at the 13th Hong Kong Film Awards, winning Best New Performer (Wu Hsing-kuo) and Best Film Score³^•⁷
Hong Kong box office	About HK$4.513 million⁷

Spoilers

Plot

The story is loosely based on the Xuanwu Gate Incident, the real assassination of AD 626 in which Li Shimin killed his brother, the crown prince Li Jiancheng, and took the throne². In the film, General Shi Yan-sheng (Wu Hsing-kuo) is a subordinate of the crown prince. His fellow general Huo Da (Zhang Fengyi) persuades him to hold his troops back during the succession struggle, promising a bloodless outcome; the prince is slaughtered instead, and the brother who killed him becomes emperor⁵^•⁸.

Racked with guilt, Shi refuses the new emperor's offer of reward and flees with a small band of loyal followers, shaving their heads and entering a monastery under the name Jingyi, while secretly planning a coup³^•⁹. Princess Hong-e, called Scarlet (Joan Chen), who loves him, joins the group and leads the disguised monks into a night of revelry in the world below the mountain; on the return journey the party is ambushed by government troops, and the princess and most of the men are killed⁵^•⁷.

Shi then takes shelter in a dilapidated temple run by an eccentric old abbot (Michael Lee), whose earthy, practical teachings stand in for conventional scripture⁵^•¹⁰. A woman who closely resembles the dead princess, Lady Qing-shou, or Violet (also Joan Chen), arrives at the temple, takes vows as a nun, and seduces Shi; she is in fact an assassin sent by the emperor to kill him⁷^•¹⁰. Huo Da's forces finally close in, and Shi must choose between the emperor's offer and his life⁹.

Production

Clara Law, a Hong Kong "Second Wave" director then dividing her time between Hong Kong and Melbourne, had built her reputation on intimate contemporary dramas such as Autumn Moon (1992); Temptation of a Monk was her venture into epic material, and the only period film in a body of work otherwise concerned with migration and contemporary life⁵. The film was a co-production between an independent Hong Kong company and a state-run Chinese partner, shot in China at Shijiazhuang in Hebei province before the formal co-production system existed⁵^•⁷.

The crew combined Hong Kong and international talent. Cinematography was shared by Andrew Lesnie, later known for The Lord of the Rings, and Arthur Wong; the editor was Jill Bilcock, and the score was by Tats Lau⁵. The art direction and costume design were by Timothy Yip (叶锦添), early in his career, who combined surrealist elements in the manner of Max Ernst with traditional Chinese dress; the score drew on erhu, sanxian, ruan, and xun to evoke the mixed Hu and Han musical world of the early Tang⁷. Law said at the premiere that she wanted the monumental landscapes to convey the idea that the people and the landscape are one².

Wu Hsing-kuo, a Taiwanese Peking Opera actor, made his feature film debut in the role of Shi⁵^•⁶. Joan Chen, returning to a Chinese-language film after many American productions, played both the princess and the assassin, and Law persuaded her to shave her head for the nun scenes¹^•².

Reception and awards

The film was entered for the 50th Venice International Film Festival in September 1993, receiving a Golden Lion nomination, and opened in Hong Kong the following month³^•⁷. It earned about HK$4.513 million in Hong Kong, a modest result, though it was well received at festivals in Europe and North America, including sold-out screenings at Rotterdam and a Toronto festival showing⁷^•¹¹.

Awards. At the 13th Hong Kong Film Awards in 1994 the film received seven nominations, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor, and won two: Best New Performer for Wu Hsing-kuo and Best Film Score for Tats Lau and Wai Kai-leung⁷. At the 30th Golden Horse Awards it was nominated in seven categories and won Best Art Design (Yip Kam-tim, Lee Wai-ming, Yang Zhanjia) and Best Film Music¹².

Critical response. Reviewers consistently praised the film's look while dividing over its substance. Paul Fonoroff wrote in the South China Morning Post that judged on visual splendor and craftsmanship it would rank as a milestone in Hong Kong cinema, citing the opening scene of hundreds of soldiers in a wintry northern Chinese landscape, but found the sumptuous looks undermined by a plodding pace and prosaic plot¹³. Stephen Teo, writing in Senses of Cinema, argued that the film starts as an epic in the manner of Kurosawa's Shakespearean films but does not sustain its epic form, and that its real theme is redemption rather than temptation, a process the film fails to expound⁵. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 64% Tomatometer from four critics, with an IMDb audience rating of 6.4 out of 10⁶.

Censorship and afterlife

The film was banned in China; Law has spoken out about the unhappy circumstances of the shoot, saying she found working with the Chinese crew difficult largely because of the exigencies of co-production financing⁵. In Hong Kong it was classified as a Category III film, the adult-only rating¹⁴.

The film reached Western home video through Fox Lorber Home Video, which released a Mandarin-language VHS in 1995, and had a United States theatrical release on 25 August 1995⁴^•¹⁵. It has since become little seen and is not generally available on streaming services²^•¹⁶. Within Law's filmography it remains the interruption in a canon otherwise devoted to contemporary stories of migration, and it was the film for which she was later best remembered among Hong Kong critics as one of her most outstanding representative works⁵^•¹⁷.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026