Western audiences have seen her as a feisty fighter in the box office hit "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and an elegant dancer in the Golden Globe-nominated "House of Flying Daggers."

Actress Ziyi Zhang presents the award for film editing at the 78th annual Academy Awards in Hollywood March 5, 2006. [Reuters]

But Zhang Ziyi proves her mettle as a true actress in a largely unknown Chinese-language production made three years ago and only now being released in Chinese mainland.

Director Hou Yong's "Jasmine Women" tells the story of three generations of Chinese women who grapple with adversity.

Muo is a budding actress in pre-communist Shanghai who's abandoned by her movie executive patron after she becomes pregnant. Li, Muo's daughter, marries a caring husband who commits suicide after she suspects him of committing incest with their adopted daughter, Hua.

Hua stands by her man as he pursues his studies only to discover that he wants a divorce after she bears a child.

The ambitious Zhang takes on all three characters - and thrives.

Her transformation throughout the movie is remarkable. As Muo, she starts out as an innocent, carefree youngster who sports bangs and wears plaid ribbons in her hair. After movie boss Mr. Meng (Jiang Wen) abandons her, she instantly turns bitter and morally indifferent, ignoring her newborn and having an affair with her mother's boyfriend.

As Hua, Zhang is an earnest, bespectacled wife at the outset. After her husband's betrayal, she contemplates murdering him, dragging a canister of gas into their bedroom, and only stops short of releasing the gas when she falls ill.

Zhang's portrayal of human evil is downright haunting.

However, director Hou, a frequent cinematographer for famed Chinese director Zhang Yimou, ends the movie on a positive note. Hua, unlike her mother and grandmother, doesn't cave into her bad fortune and soldiers on.

Zhang brings a steely toughness to Hua's character, highlighted in a dramatic childbirth scene near the end of the movie.

It's a shame that one of Zhang's finest movies hasn't seen the light of day until now. It's unclear why the release of "Jasmine Women" was delayed. At a recent news conference to promote the film, Zhang and a movie executive were vague about reasons for the delay.

While "Jasmine Women" is now being shown in Zhang's home country, its overseas distribution prospects are also unclear.

One pitfall of "Jasmine Women," adapted from the Chinese novel "Women's Life" by Su Tong, is its theme of female suffering, a topic that has already been tortuously explored in Chinese cinema. Still, Zhang's stellar performance transcends the subject matter.