Five Girls and a Rope (1990)

"Five Girls and a Rope" is a 1990 Drama movie directed by Xiao Mao and starring by Jing Ai, Zhang Shi. Five girls grow up in China during the first years of the twentieth century. When they become adults they have to learn that women are almost without rights. Other women close to them are suppressed in the most brutal way. When Mingtao is to marry a mentally deficient but rich man, she and her friends decide to escape and to search for the mythical "garden" where a woman's life is worth living.