The Chanting Willows

Both movies are about a pair of yuè opera singers and about social issues. Stage Sisters is about the contrast between art and stark reality in a troubled age of the 1930s-1940s when opera singers were still considered low class and easy to prey on ; The Chanting Willows is set in the 1990s with the artists more respected but their art on the wane.

Both movies are about Chines opera singers and women/men playing the opposite gender, blurring the lines between femininity a masculinity, becoming almost a "third gender" troubled by emotions.

Both movies are Chinese opera and the role of women in this art. The King of Masks is depicting a child opera player, while the Chanting Willows are about two adult females, but both are tinged by the worry about a dying art and cultural form.