This film is about a young woman, Songlian, a former student, who decides to become a rich man's 4th concubine. She feels that she has no other choice, since her stepmother wants to get rid of her after her father's death, and she has no way of paying for school.
As soon as she moves in to her new quarter, she meets open hostility from some of the other women.
The only friend she has is 2nd Mistress (or does she?) 3rd Mistress treats her unfairly from the start, and 1st Mistress really wants nothing to do with any of them.
The Master of the house has a long family tradition that dictates that red lanterns will be lit in the quarter of the woman whom he is going to spend the night with. Everyday, each woman has to wait by the entranceof their quarter in the courtyard to see which one of them will be chosen. Talk about cruel competition. If that's not bad enough, to make the women even more jealous, only the one with red lanterns gets a foot massage. After not getting a foot massage after having one for many days (as the new mistress) Songlian actually begins to crave it. She plots a way to make sure that she will have a foot massage every night, by pretending to be pregnant.
When Songlian isn't dealing with pettiness from 3rd Mistress, she also has to deal with a jealous, vindictive maid. The maid is jealous of 4th Mistress because she had delusions of being a Mistress because of the affair she is having with the Master. Yang, the maid, hates 4th Mistress so much that she tells 2nd Mistress that she has had her period, which angers the Master so much that he covers her lanterns. This means that he will not be lighting the lanterns for a very long time.
It turns out the 2nd Mistress was really a woman with "a buddha face, but the heart of a scorpion". The whole time she was pretending to be friendly with Songlian, she was really plotting against her, as she was with 3rd Mistress. 3rd Mistress may have been mean to Songlian at first, but really she is the only nice one there.
On a day when she was not chosen, Songlian begins to explore the house. On the farthest and highest roof she sees a locked room and wonders what is inside. She finds out that that room was used for hanging women of past generations.
Everything about this house is slowly changing Songlian. One day she gets drunk because she is depressed about causing the maid's death (in a fit of rage and vengeance) and about having her lanterns covered. She mistakingly tells 2nd Mistress a secret about 3rd Mistress that causes the Master to "send her away" (to the room-top room).
In the end, Songlian looses her mind.
I found it interesting that the Master's face was never clearly seen. He is almost seen when he is in the bed of Songlian, but the camera only ever focuses on the women. They are the main focus of the film. The face of the man is unimportant. Because in actuality, it didn't matter which man it was who they were bound to, they would have had the same problems if they had married any other rich man.
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