Flowers of Shanghai
by Hsiao-hsien Hou
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Annie Shizuka Inoh, Jack Kao, Michiko Hada, Shuan Fang, Tony Leung Chiu WaiDirector: Hsiao-hsien Hou
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Cantonese (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 113 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-08-14
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Fox Lorber
Movie Reviews of Flowers of Shanghai
Movie Review: Profane illumination in a Shanghai brothel
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm utterly baffled by the critics who weren't at least partially moved by this absorbing, at once sensual and cerebral film. It presents a question utterly foreign to consumers of Hollywood fare, but also totally fascinating: what are the limits of exchange? On the surface of the movie, the answer is: there are no limits. But as the film progresses, the director has an opportunity to slowly unfold, layer by layer, the implications of this statement. Occurring as it does in a time when the British are introducing the pleasures of "free trade" to China (the story takes place in 1888, after the two Opium wars; it's significant that the British are also financing these courtesan houses), it holds up this question like a multifaceted jewel to light, exploring in great detail the possibilities of enslavement and freedom that universal prostitution unleashes. It turns the men into both objects of consumption and absolute masters; it turns the women into calculating bookkeepers and artists of emotional cruelty, to themselves as well as each other and the men. All this performed in a highly stylized, exquisite rhythm of ritualized activities (the drinking game, the served meal, the opium pipe, the bookkeeping) where the characters oscillate between sensual abandon and frigid contemplation.
I can see why Eileen Chang liked this story enough to translate it from the original Wu dialect to Mandarin. As the reigning queen of the Chinese short story, "Flowers of Shanghai" contains all the elements that so preoccupied her about the disappearance (or obsolescence) of imperial culture and the struggle of women and men to make a home in modern disenchantment. The movie pairs well with Wong Kar Wai's "In the Mood for Love," "2046" and Ang Lee's recent "Lust / Caution" (all of which were directly or indirectly based on Eileen Chang's works).
Summary of Flowers of Shanghai
With Flowers of Shanghai, Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien delivers the opulent world of late-19th-century Chinese courtesans and their suitors miraculously intact. Hou's films are perhaps the most beguiling yet restrained in all of contemporary cinema, and this is no exception. Told as a series of panel-like portraits, the camera discreetly withdraws from raucous dinner parties and drinking games into the muted, jewel-like chambers of various flower girls. The need to procure patrons and eventual husbands from among their visitors lends an increasing air of anxiety to the games of seduction and betrayal played out within. As the young Master Wang (Tony Leung) soon learns, there is scarcely room for love inside this precarious world of decorum, addiction, and greed. Hou's canny ability to place characters so convincingly within a context is the work of a master filmmaker--nothing is ever assumed or contrived. From the stunning opening dinner scene to the resigned finale, Flowers is a seamless vision. --Fionn MeadeArt House & International DVD Video
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