Women from the Lake of Scented Souls, directed by Xie Fei and starred by Siqin Gaowa, depicts two women. Mrs. Xiang'er, the protagonist, enjoys people's sympathy and praises but makes people hate her. Coming from a poor family, she was sold as a child bride at the age of seven and forced to consummate the marriage at the age of thirteen. Her husband is a heavy drinker. In the family, she is used as a tool to make money and satisfy her husband's sexual desires, and she finds a taste of happiness only when she is with her secret lover Ren Zhongshi, a truck driver. She is capable and sagacious. In China's reforms, she runs an out-of-the-way sesame oil mill by Xiangdian Lake, and the oil mill is known far and near. More than 20 years after her marriage, she creates another tragedy by buying a virtuous wife for her son who suffers from epilepsy.

The daughter-in-law, named Huanhuan, is kindhearted, quiet and industrious. She has unfortunately become the victim of an absurd, benighted marriage just to help her parents repay the family debt. It is pitiable that she has never thought to struggle for a better fate. The film sets Mrs. Xiang'er and Huanhuan against a background of rural life during the years of reform and opening-up to the outside world and makes their individualities, psychologies and codes of conduct collide violently with the times, urging people to think about money and life, the spiritual and the material, and the emancipation of people themselves.

Women from the Lake of Scented Souls won the Golden Bear Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1993. The film enabled China's realistic films to become more penetrating.