Flowers of Shanghai (1998) User Reviews (31)

Evocative but empty

[rch427 · 6/10 · 11 January 2005]

First, a disclaimer: I love so-called "art films", from Cocteau and Eisenstein to David Lynch and Krystof Kieslowski. I have a long attention span and am willing to extend considerable effort towards appreciating any work of art.

Having said that, The Flowers of Shanghai was largely a disappointment. Yes, the sets and costuming are sumptuous. True, the mood evoked by the film is seductive. And the subject matter--the relationships between courtesans and their clients--is at least provocative. But for a number of reasons, Hou fails to deliver a film that rises above those elements.

The reasons are many. First, the plot is minimal--hardly compelling--mostly relying upon the petty machinations between the courtesans and the clients who try not to become too involved with them. But such a minimal plot can only engage if we become involved in the characters, and this is very difficult to do.

That's problem number two: the characters simply aren't compelling. The men tend to be equivocal and emotionally distant. The women tend to be shallow and manipulative. Since there are essentially no close-up shots, and the physical expressions are very restrained, we have no sense of people's emotional states. There is not one character that we can really care about.

Third: the editing is leisurely. Really leisurely. Glacial. Very few directors can pull off a five minute interior shot with almost no dialogue or action; Ozu was one. But Hou--although better than many contemporary directors--isn't up to Ozu's level by a long shot. Hou's scenes, unlike Ozu's, don't so much engender our contemplation as they engender tedium. A director has to be able to recognize when a scene has come to the end of its life; this he doesn't seem to be able to do.

A note to the curious: every shot in this film is an interior shot; you never see the outdoors--not even the sky through the windows. And despite the subject matter and the warnings of adult content on the box, there are no sex scenes; there is no nudity. Structure-wise, the film depicts three activities: men playing "rock, paper, scissors" around a table, people having their little dramas in private, and people brooding.

That's basically it.

I would like to be able to say that The Flowers of Shanghai was more than just a 2-hours-plus visual curiosity, but it simply isn't. And more the shame because of its wasted potential.

A Study: Pleasure Shouldn't Just Turn Into Vindictiveness

[GertrudeStern · 7/10 · 20 July 2016]

I came to this movie because Mark Lee Ping Bin did the cinematography, and I was not let down. For a movie that never leaves the four walls of various brothels throughout Shanghai, each scene really fills up the screen, has irresistible colors and lighting and splendor, only to fade softly into black and light up into something new. Imagine how delighted I was to find that the cinematography was matched by an equally strong concept, and that the film is basically a series of vitriolic or pining Craigstlist missed connections ads nestled within an intricate and iron-clad social hierarchy.

A fun touch: in the first conversation of the film, one master tells a tale over dinner, sitting around the table with his friends and their companions. It is the story of Crystal (whose outcome will be revealed later in the film) and her lover, a young patron named Yufu. The speaker says that Crystal and Yufu are joined together like toffee, star-crossed lovers who can't get enough of each other. Soon, a debate breaks out: is this type of love a healthy way to live? A few men balk at the idea that growing gaunt from staring into one another's eyes is acceptable. Then the film drags us through countless loveless or otherwise fraught relationships where everyone is withering, suicidal or raging. Seems that in 19th century Shanghai, you just can't win.

Watch out for Master Wang...he's the pesky stray thread that undoes the whole damned sweater.

Twice Baked Potato

[zoegene · 7/10 · 12 November 2001]

I have to view the movie twice, once by reading the subtitles, and the second time to enjoy the movie itself. When I was reading the subtitles, I found "Flowers of Shanghai" boring. When I focused on the film itself, it was actually a nice movie. I could feel the opium filled air, the emotions of the characters were buried under the smokes. Only a small number of Chinese-speaking audience would have no need to read the subtitles because the dialogs were spoken in a specific dialect.

Hou's Rules of the Game

[dave-593 · 10/10 · 30 June 1999]

Hou Hsiao-Hsien's "Flowers of Shanghai" is an opium dream of a movie: visually and aurally there is no mistaking that this is the work of an artist with the imagination of a poet, and the precision of a clockmaker. The opening shot is among the most exquisite in all of cinema: a veritable tour de force that exudes Hou's love for the film medium, but is decidedly restrained and controlled, never allowing style to upstage the narrative and degenerate into mere spectacle. In keeping with the film's setting and rules of patriarchy, the major male characters are introduced first. The women serving these men are then introduced in the following "chapters", each one preceded by title cards announcing their names and place of residence as if gently mocking or subverting the patriarchical order.

This chamberpiece drama of sexual intrigue and power struggle is astonishingly acute in capturing the feel and sensibilities of the late 19th century but expressed in very contemporary terms without any apparent compromises or contradictions. The painterly colors of "Flowers" may invite comparison with Dutch masters like Vermeer even when Hou is deliberately conjuring an idealized world that is as hermetic as it is artificial: a world composed entirely without natural light is like a dream, hauntingly beautiful and intense but impossible to hold or to keep. That the film is shot entirely indoors and the mise-en-scene is orchestrated without any close-ups is a testament of Hou's faith and supreme confidence in creating a work that remains completely cinematic while averting the pitfalls of feeling stage bound. Despite the subject matter what is also startling is the complete absence of physical sex on screen; and, yet the film manages to sustain an erotically charged atmosphere.

Beginning with "The Puppetmaster" Hou has been increasingly moving towards a more minimalist form of cinema, stripping the narrative of everything that is superfluous until nothing is left but its emotional core, naked and unadulterated. "Flowers" is very much an interior film that does not depend on voiceover narration to make thoughts explicit. Hou's almost static camera continues to favor long medium takes ranging from 5 to 7 minutes, framing key characters sharing the same space and time, but well within reach of each other, capturing the subtle interplay and nuances while allowing them to drift in and out of the picture frame according to their relative importance in the social hierarchy. In this manner an entire community is evoked: demonstrating that the window to the world is precisely through the interior lives of individuals responsible for shaping the body politic.

A beautiful, excellent film- a future classic

[nycsean · 25 March 2004]

I have to disagree with the previous poster on this film, I thought it was fantastic and moving. It tells the stories of a set of turn-of-the century courtesans and their client in Shanghai. About 20 characters revolve in and out, yet the director has expertly chosen to focus on key moments and conversations. The movie never leaves the internal rooms of the brothels or "flower houses", and you feel a sense of the entrapped social circumstances that ensnares all the characters. The cinematography is beautiful, taking advantage of low-lighting and inner spaces.

Beautiful, moving, and insightful

[pcg · 10/10 · 6 May 2001]

This hypnotically beautiful film may recall a dream, but the material world of money and power, indentured servitude and beatings everywhere intrudes on it. We discover in the contrasting stories of Emerald, Pearl, Crimson, Jade, and Crystal, how some survive as "flower girls" and others are crushed. Far from being boring or cold, the film is compelling dramatically and emotionally. "Flowers of Shanghai" seems to contain boundless reserves of sadness and rage -- it is as if the sex and violence are not on screen because Hou cannot bear to show them. If "Flowers of Shanghai" is an opium dream, as many have said, the opium is both bringing pleasure and suppressing pain.

"Flowers of Shanghai" shows compassion for its characters, both the innocents and those who survive through cynical manipulation. The scene-length takes in medium shots work to establish respect for each person within the film, while at the same time bringing about a kind of "rectification of names," systematically exposing the hypocrisy of the brothels. It's appropriate that one of the few moments of violent action in the film occurs when Master Wang smashes the exquisite interior decoration in a room: "Flowers of Shanghai" shows the seductive beauty of the brothel then reveals it to be a cage. Everyone in the film is on multiple levels unfree: the women are financially bound to the brothels and dependent on the whims of their clients, and almost everyone is addicted to opium.

The film never leaves the brothels. This expresses how the brothels in fact own the women. However, as Stephen Teo noted in CinemaScope, there's another detail that's easy to overlook: the women's bound feet prevent them from easily walking more than a few feet.

For a select audience only (but count me out)

[psteier · 6/10 · 9 December 2001]

Done in a very formal and elliptic style, with long shots from a single camera and without crosscutting. All the scenes are in rooms of a few Flower Houses (where the women live and sometimes meet their customers) and in a tea house, where the customers eat and drink and call in Flower Girls for entertainment and company.

What action there is centers around the women trying to keep their customers coming, to marry the customer (the preferred way out of the business), or to attract the customers from other women. A bit of economics is thrown in for good measure.

I could not get interested in the plot or the characters. Though the costumes and sets are well done, they are not worth two hours.

Challenging but magnificent...

[Balthazar-5 · 10/10 · 5 November 2004]

I saw this film at Cannes where delegates, including would-be intelligent critics emerged from the film scratching their heads and mumbling 'interesting' - a sure sign that they couldn't understand a word of it. For me it had been an epiphanous experience.

Six months later Cahiers du Cinema voted it the best film of its year...

I am sure there is a word to describe the effect of the film, but I can't lay my hand on it, so I will say 'emotionally disjoint'. As the men sit around playing Mah Jong talking, generally of trivia, huge emotional dramas are going on, but obliquely, in relation to the girls in the brothel. The effect is crushing.

I thought, while watching, mainly of Jean-Marie Straub as it has a minimalist side, but with such greater emotional power and resonance. It is so tragic that this magnificent film has had such a poor release in the west - no theatrical distribution at all in the UK...

Glamorous and empty, just like its subjects

[khsu · 6/10 · 27 February 2012]

I feel like the human spirit almost completely disappeared into the opium smoke in this one, and I think that's Hou's and screenwriter Chu's intention, telling of a kind of fin-de-siecle decadence that mirrored their feelings about Taiwan and the world in the late 90s. Pretty, but ultimately vacuous and bleak, riddled with decay and death, perverse on the inside. (The preceding 'Goodbye South, Goodbye' and succeeding 'Millenium Mambo' are in the same vein.) It's a somewhat one-sided and curmudgeonly lamentous philosophical view of things, though, in my opinion.

It's interesting the writer Eileen Chang originally translated Han Bangqing's novel from Wu into Mandarin because she was attracted precisely to the grand realism of the everyday human dynamics and stories in the book, to its profound warmth, especially in the foibles and failings of its characters. Here that's all but vanished, and we're left with a pretty surface, a scintillating exterior like a Faberge egg, with a void inside. Warmth in the film becomes stuffiness, smoke, suffocation, dark claustrophobic paranoia. It's cynical (but cynicism is simply the flipside of naivite), and I suspect it's more Chu's doing than Hou's. Hou's earlier films weren't like this; it's only when Chu became the sole writer (after co-writer Wu Nien-jen's departure after GSG) that Hou's movies became more and more self-gazing and decadent/indulgent.

Which makes me wonder, what would another director (eg Edward Yang) have done with the same material?

That old toxic business...

[klauskind · 10/10 · 9 December 2004]

Prostitution has been a popular trade in the movies. It could be about glamorous courtesans in chic apartments for the rich or miserable young women in dingy hotel rooms for the low wages of the poor, some kind of bordello or simply that most elliptical dishonour, the heroine with a dirty past. Sometimes the girls got married, sometimes they remained alone or died but they were usually entitled to a sublimated love scene with their lovers, if not their customers, and when morals changed they could be obliging enough to have sex with both lovers and customers.

Hou Hsiao-hsien makes this film as if it belonged in some old time that maybe never existed. Flowers of Shanghai is a film about glamorous brothel-bound prostitutes without a single sex scene but it shows or tells everything else, which provides it with a surreal intimacy.

That intimacy is reinforced by the fact that there are no exterior scenes and by the gripping warmth of its colour palette. That warmth invites you into the movie's visual environment to share in the cruel melancholy of the stories, the domestic routines through which they unfold and in some unexpected comic episodes: an attentive camera that pans and zooms attests to a regimented fate for the characters it watches, carefully staged vignettes shot in distant takes feel like vivid scenes spied on through a keyhole or behind a curtain and in some cases the dramatic expectations about the characters are ironically upended.

There's a great article on the movie in the external reviews section. The author is in awe of what he writes about. It lingers on Hou's camera movements and framing and gives a detailed account of what makes this movie intoxicating. But it's in Portuguese, so stop reading this and learn the language!

Over rated

[sailorplutoouterscout · 6/10 · 21 October 2006]

I find this movie to be slow paced and boring, while it brings up the subjects of class, gender and the down falls we take in life splendidly. I found my self wishing that this would end quickly, this film almost seemed like it was in a haze the character stuck the ruts of life, trying to claw their way out. Included in this film was heavy opium use, this I found interesting. The costuming while beautiful and drool worthy added very little to these indecisive characters.

Slowly true intentions are brought to the surface and a bit to slowly, the crispness that often appears in films of this nature is gone leaving you with a gritty feel. I am sad to say that this barely passes the test, despite its many awards and nominations I found myself bored. Not the worst but also not best.

don't miss it if you're movie-loving

[sir_beat · 10/10 · 10 February 2002]

This is something strange to explain; it's a very aesthetic film. It's certainly very slow for many people, but if you get in it, you lose track of time because it is so much fascinating. A strange sensation. A really beautiful film in all my heart. This is these sorts of films you love more and more when you watch them.

If you like cinema, don't miss it. You won't regret it.

Aunties

[dannylee-78082 · 6/10 · 3 February 2024]

I really wish I liked this movie because it's one of the major works of well regarded Tawainese director Hou Hsiao-hsien. But for me, I think I was less than stimulated by the overall film. I think I am fine with the extreme long takes (only 40 shots in the 2 hour film!) but there just wasn't anything interesting about the overall dialogues. I could hardly see the emotional expression of the characters which made me feel removed from the movie. Most of the relevant drama happened off-screen which made most of the movie a little dull. A large part about the movie was just men playing drinking game, which wasn't particularly interesting at all. The music was mostly the same throughout, which is what I think was also bothering me. I appreciated the overall atmosphere of the movie and I have to say the overall set design felt like it was a great period film. The relationships portrayed in the film were interesting as the girl seemed like a bit of higher status than the prostitutes that we picture in our head, as they are forming real relationships with their patrons. I really wish I had more good things about to say about this film but as of now, I am running out. I think my brain is a little too modern and scattered to fully appreciate films like this, unfortunately.

Fails in both art and entertainment

[mage121179 · 2/10 · 11 March 2002]

I was hopeful of this film, because I generally like period film dramas, and I thought an asian brothel might provide an interesting look at a new culture to me. However, the style and plot of this film made it unbearable to watch, and with each fade to black I prayed it wouldn't fade back in again.

The costumes and sets were beautiful, but the audience is not allowed a good enough look at them. With poor lighting and absolutely no close-ups, we are left with a vague impression of what the location and people look like. Another problem with the lack of close-ups is the inability to see the emotions of the characters. We hear a lot of crying, but that's about it. I felt no empathy for the characters, because I couldn't even get a picture of what they looked like, much less how they were feeling.

As for the pace of the movie, I don't think it goes anywhere. It has no plot, no driving force, and no interest in character or story. It's like someone just stuck a security camera in a brothel. How can you call that art or entertainment?

Fascinating and hyponitic

[joecampbell · 3 August 2003]

This is a film for patient and serious film-lovers. From the first scene, one face takes almost complete possession of the screen - that of Tony Leung. There he is, a silent member of a group of drinking men, and just try to take your eyes off him. Throughout the entire film, he dominates, but that is exactly right for this tale of obsessive love in a 'house of flowers'. A totally fascinating film.

A visual feast

[zetes · 9/10 · 20 March 2002]

I don't like Hou Hsiao-Hsien much. He's not a very well known director, but those who do know him often praise him as if he were Christ risen on Earth for the second time. It gets very out of hand. I personally liked two of his earlier films, Dust in the Wind and City of Sadness, but found them rather flawed. The other films I've seen of his, A Time to Live and a Time to Die, The Puppetmaster, Good Men Good Women, and Goodbye South Goodbye, are profoundly flawed with only a little worth each. I wasn't too excited to see Flowers from Shanghai, but its gotten such continuous praise, even from those who had seen only it from Hou, that I decided to give it a chance. I'm happy I did. Very happy, indeed.

I had dismissed the burgeoning camera movements in Goodbye South Goodbye as a phony advance in Hou's style. I'm glad I was wrong. In Flowers of Shanghai, Hou effectively pans his camera back and forth and around in spirals in every single shot (and, of course, "shot" in Hou Hsiao-Hsien's vocabulary is a synonym of "scene;" most shots last a very long time). The cinematography, too, is a lot better than it has been (although he has plenty of beautiful shots in his other films, as well). The film seems tinted with gold, and beautiful reds take up most of the space in each frame, until a beautiful blotch of yellow or blue arrives. Mixed with that slowly panning camera (sometimes it's a bit reminiscent of Tarkovsky's shots), that makes for pure sensuousness. It can be simply orgasmic at times. The mise-en-scene is also fabulous. The film takes place in a Shanghai brothel (the "flowers" of the title are the prostitutes), and every inch of the each set is decorated perfectly. And aurally, man, the subtle music is just powerful.

It's all so damn beautiful that I kind of ignored what was happening with the characters on screen. It's so damn beautiful that it's rather easy to forget that there are people acting here; their movements and actions are so elegant (and their language sounds so beautiful) that they might as well be thought of as objects, not people. When I finally started to pay more attention to the plot and the characters, it seemed a bit banal. The story revolves around the prostitutes and their frequent customers. The film says nothing new about the subject, and it comes off a bit trite. I'm hoping that I just didn't follow it well enough, that, if I were to buy the DVD and watch it again, I would feel the emotions more. However, I don't believe that that's true. Although his fanatics would fiecely deny it, Hou has never done very well in expressing emotions in his films. Dust in the Wind and City of Sadness are the best in that respect, but take the cheap melodramatics of A Time to Live a Time to Die in comparison. Or take The Puppetmaster: its cinematography is rather boring, and the film comes off as extremely dull. Luckily, I appreciate direction and visual splendor much more than a good story. If I wanted a good story, books would probably be a better medium. Flowers of Shanghai gets a 9/10 from me. I hope that Hou evolves ever more in the future. His style seems perfected in this film (perhaps he should even scrap his signature style and reinvent himself; just a suggestion). Now he needs some substance. Hopefully he'll work again with Wu Nien-Jen, who wrote his Dust in the Wind and City of Sadness, his most substantial films (he also wrote The Puppetmaster, though). I just saw Wu's own directorial debut, Dou-San, this past weekend and it had an emotionally devastating script. I'll cross my fingers!

A visually stunning movie. Beautifully filmed!

[Shannon-16 · 10/10 · 21 January 1999]

"Flowers of Shanghai" impressed me greatly with the depth of style with which it was filmed. Everything about this film was visually decadent ... the lighting, the interior spaces, the actresses... It was difficult at times to sympathize with the Flower girls (call girls), because there were so many of them to sympathize with, and not enough time to fully develop their characters. The social narrative may only prove interesting to those interested in turn-of-the-century China. But any lover of beauty should try hard to see this movie, preferably in a theater. The use of color surpassed any American movie I have ever seen. It was a welcome change from American films, which for the most part are aesthetically indifferent.

Fascinating film about a world within a world

[Red-125 · 9/10 · 7 December 2014]

The film Hai shang hua was shown in the U.S. with the title Flowers of Shanghai (1998). It was directed by Hsiao-Hsien Hou.

This movie is a Japanese film, but the dialog is in Cantonese, Mandarin, and the Wu language of Shanghai. (Although I haven't seen any confirmation of this, it looked to me as if some of the dialog was dubbed. Possibly the actors were speaking Japanese, but were dubbed into Chinese.)

This is a meticulous, careful film about houses of prostitution in Shanghai in 1884. Four houses are represented, but I have to admit that it wasn't always clear to me in which house the action was taking place. These houses, called "Flower Houses," were only for the very wealthy and powerful. The furnishings were elegant, there were servants everywhere, and the women were very beautiful. Unlike what we outsiders know about geishas, these women didn't appear to be skilled in musical instruments or singing. Everyone understands that they perform their professional duties in the bedrooms. However, the houses are used for parties and drinking, with the women present as hostesses and onlookers. (Incidentally, in a film about prostitutes, there's absolutely no visible flesh--all the women are fully. and elegantly. clothed at all times.)

The social hierarchy of both the "flowers" and their clients is carefully delineated and known to all. The "Aunties" rule the houses, but the women themselves have a carefully defined status. They are more like indentured servants than slaves, even though they have been purchased from their parents at a young age. Some of the women have their own servants, and the houses are full of cooks and waitresses.

This film was shot completely indoors, in sets, in Japan. There's not a single scene shot outside one of the houses. People talk about going for a ride in the park, or for an evening at the opera, but we never see anyone actually do this.

Instead, we have a complex indoor social world, with feuds, ambitions, betrayals, and greedy acts all taking place before us. Hou Hsiao-hsien is known for his long takes, and his slow dissolves. Typically, his camera doesn't move at all, although in this film it moves, but only slowly and carefully.

This is a film that I highly recommend, although I admit that I wasn't always certain about the specifics of the plots. As I read the IMDb synopsis, I realized that I had missed some key elements. However, I still enjoyed the movie, and it will work--as it did for me--even if you can't always remember which flower is Jasmin and which is Jade.

We saw this film as part of a Hou Hsiao-hsien retrospective at the wonderful Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House in Rochester. It will work on DVD, but it you get a chance to see it in a theater, go for it. It's interesting, powerful, and opens up a whole new world.

A challenging, audacious film

[allyjack · 8/10 · 30 July 1999]

The movie is told through scenes shot mainly (perhaps solely) in a single shot of slow, composed movement - it never moves outside; it's utterly claustrophobic and hermetic. In the beginning it's too much of a whirlpool of characters to be assimilated, but then the audacity of the structure starts to clarify - some of those initial people never seem to be seen again, whereas others recur - slowly building a theme of the flower girls' aspirations to freedom or at least self-determination. There's no overt passion here, no nudity, no sex - motivations remain somewhat obscure although they're obviously born in an intricate subculture of sexual politics and social hierarchies - these are unfolded gradually, but remain as formalized and inaccessible as the strange game the men continually play (that just seems to consist of words and hand movements). There's a sort of resigned serenity to the way that some stories but not others find closure, and the camerawork evokes a calm, mystic eye - finding moments of truth but never yielding its mystery.

The new age film!

[Byung · 10/10 · 17 March 1999]

Hsiao-hsien Hou pushes his style to maximum in this movie. His sequence shots leaves only his spirit for love and its power. Making the consciousness of the

movie likely dust, the subtle camera movement helps Hsiao-hsien Hou to achieve this style. The shots vanish and scenes only continue. It can be called truly a no shot movie. This style fits the beauty of Asia very well conceptually and visually! Relax, it's just a movie. Drink the visual of foods and opium and drunk like a new age music.

Artsy but too slow for my taste

[chanw · 5/10 · 27 January 2003]

This is the first time I have watched this director's work. The only way I can comment on it is to compare it with something I'm familiar with. That said, I have to say I see a lot of Wong Kar Wai (a well known somewhat off mainstream Chinese director) in Shanghai Flowers.

I am a fan of Wong's movies in general. To many viewers, even some of Wong's masterpiece was too slow of a pace. Shanghai Flowers certainly lacks the occasional subtle high/low found in Wong's movies - no matter how slow.

A tidbit to add is that, although listed as spoken in Shanghainese (which is understood by mainly Shanghai ppl only), the dialogues in private between the lead actor (Leung) and his mistress were done in Cantonese. This intermixing of dialects and/or languages has appeared to be a trendy technique in many Chinese productions. That is to say, it is rare that a viewer (even a Chinese one) can sit through any late Chinese movie without having to read some of the subtitles.

Tableau, semi-vivant

[nunculus · 23 August 2000]

The Taiwanese writer-director Hou Hsiao-hsien is regarded by many as the greatest living filmmaker, and FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI is widely considered one of the strongest contemporary movies. Hou's approach is both anthropological and highly formalized: this examination of the economics and Machiavellian power politics of a Shanghai brothel in the mid-1800's stays remote. The feeling is sometimes that of a news crew eager not to intrude, but the mise-en-scene evokes the mastery of space-carving in Kurosawa's HIGH AND LOW or Bresson's UNE FEMME DOUCE. Shot in wide, mobile masters that go on for four or five minutes at a stretch, FLOWERS is theatrical in the extreme, and, as in a Yuan drama or a Kun opera, Hou stays at a more than respectful reserve from his characters. For some, this spells high-art elegance; others may feel starved for vividness and human immediacy, and wish the film to end far sooner than it does.

One of the greatest films ever made.

[MOscarbradley · 10/10 · 2 December 2021]

Shot entirely in a series of single takes, Hsiao-Hsien Hou's "Flowers of Shanghai" is set in the flower houses, (brothels), of 19th century Shanghai and the flowers are the courtesans. The film, based on the novel by Bangqing Han. Is a sumptuous, leisurely portrait of life there, comprising mostly of petty squabbles between the girls over their 'gentlemen callers'. In dramatic terms not a great deal happens. Hou's slowly moving camera becomes an interloper, picking up snatches of dialogue and conversations between the girls and their patrons, the subject almost always involving money; sex is conspiculously absent, at least on-screen. Eating and drinking seem to be the predominant pasttimes.

Superbly acted and directed and stunningly photographed and designed this magnificent film has already figured in polls of the greatest films ever made. 'Pure cinema' in the very best sense of the term and yet it could just as easily exist on the stage, (there are no exterior shots). Midway through it flirts with melodrama as movies involving jealousy are prone to do but Hou keeps even this at arm's length. It would appear that emotions in China are more restrained than some of those high-kicking action films might suggest. Gorgeous and surprisingly moving and with a surprising streak of humour, this is one of the greatest of all period films. A masterpiece.

The movie is very sophisticated but also slow-paced.

[pete-95 · 8/10 · 19 December 1998]

The movie is successful in portraying the culture and power structure of the Shanghai brothels in the era but it is perhaps too subtle and slow-paced for modern audience.

perhaps insightful, I wouldn't know

[bedazzle · 4/10 · 21 October 2001]

Perhaps this movie was moving and insightful, I wouldn't know because I was bored out of my mind. That is quite an accomplishment for a movie with subtitles because usually there is so much going on with both watching and reading at the same time - not in this case. I'd quickly read the subtitles, nothing, watch the movie, nothing. This is one of those foreign movies that people like for the sole virtue that it is foreign. That's not good enough for me.