Winner of the audience vote for best film at San Francisco's 1992 Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, The Twin Bracelets is a scalding critique of traditional male chauvinism and female oppression in Chinese society.

Filmed in 1990 and set in the 1980s, it deals with two women trying to express their romantic feelings in a backwater fishing village where arranged marriages are still the norm. A young lesbian named Hui-hua comes out of the closet by declaring her love for Hsiu, a childhood friend, and feels jealous and abandoned when Hsiu is married off.

"Don't marry and leave me behind," cries Hui-hua, who wants her friend "to be sister man and wife, to live together and die together." She declares that their intimacy is greater than that of any husband and wife, and exchanges bracelets with the woman she loves.

Meanwhile, the husbands reveal themselves to be a boorish lot, watching porno to prepare for their wedding nights and humiliating one woman so completely that she impales herself. The males are treated with outrageous favoritism even by the local matriarchs, and only Hui-hua challenges tradition. Confronted with an arranged spouse of her own, it's finally too much for her to handle.

While it lacks the visual grandeur and formal elegance of Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern, the movie presents a similarly severe and tragic view of Chinese sexism. Chen Te Jung, as Hui-hua, brings an erotic energy to her performance, while Liu Hsiao Hui is quietly effective as the relatively passive object of her love.

Created by women, The Twin Bracelets is ultimately less about lesbianism than it is about a poisonous society that offers few attractive alternatives. The director, Yu-Shan Huang, conjures up a world that is nothing but traps for those who act on their feelings.