In Shanghai in the 1880s there are four elegant brothels (flower houses): each has an auntie (called madam), a courtesan in her prime, older servants, and maturing girls in training. The men gather around tables of food, playing drinking games. An opium pipe is at hand. The women live within dark-paneled walls. The atmosphere is stifling, as if Chekhov was in China. The melancholy Wang is Crimson's patron; will he leave her for the younger Jasmin? Emerald schemes to buy her f... (Full plot summary below)
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In Shanghai in the 1880s there are four elegant brothels (flower houses): each has an auntie (called madam), a courtesan in her prime, older servants, and maturing girls in training. The men gather around tables of food, playing drinking games. An opium pipe is at hand. The women live within dark-paneled walls. The atmosphere is stifling, as if Chekhov was in China. The melancholy Wang is Crimson's patron; will he leave her for the younger Jasmin? Emerald schemes to buy her freedom, aided by patron Luo. Pearl, an aging flower, schools the willful Jade, who thinks she has a marriage agreement with young master Zhu. Is she dreaming? Women fade, or connive, or despair.
Leave your thoughts about Flowers of Shanghai.
| Chicago TribuneMichael WilmingtonFlowers Of Shanghai is concerned with the commodification of sex and its hurtful consequences, but Hou leaves the perversion and beatings off-screen. What remains is a succession of tableaux so vividly realized in purely cinematic terms that the emotions seem to waft from the screen like smoke. |
| Boston GlobeJay CarrThe languid yet precise cinematography throughout gives it the seductive power of a drug-induced dream. |
| The GuardianRichard WilliamsFlowers of Shanghai operates on the whole much like Yoshihiro’s music, filling your senses like a thick haze, holding you rapt without petitioning for your attention. |
| The New York TimesLawrence Van GelderLavish in its depiction of surfaces -- clothing, furniture, lighting fixtures -- Flowers of Shanghai proves deficient in its revelation of inner lives. |
| New York PostLarry WorthThe camera never ventures outside, but remains fixed on the action at the table, gliding languidly past the same sepia-toned tableau: In the film's universe, people are indistinguishable and the setting never changes. Hou does succeed in one key respect: His films evokes opium addiction, a narcotic delirium fading into a dreamless sleep. |
