Flowers of Shanghai
Staring Tony Leung and Michiko Mada
Directed by Hou Hsiao Hsien
The films of Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao Hsien have been almost impossible to see for most moviegoers outside of cities with major film festivals. Slow-moving, esthetically rigorous, narratively obtuse and often concerned with arcane elements of Taiwanese history, Hou's films have had a difficult time finding adventurous distributors to promote their virtues.
That, at least, is the reason why none of Hou's films have ever been released in North America. But a multi-city cinematheque retrospective of his films last year proved the distributors wrong – thanks to major critical support, the screenings played to sold-out crowds and the retrospective has even begun a second tour. All of this prompted Winstar, a U.S. distribution company, to pick up the home video rights to four of Hou's films.
It's a move to be applauded, but Hou's films are, in fact, quite difficult to understand – for a film viewer whose diet consists of processed American or American-influenced storytelling techniques, his movies can be a lot of work. Still, their unique pacing, esthetics and narrative, can, with a little effort, be approached with excitement by those who make the effort. For them, Hou's films will be an invigorating tonic to the staid, cookie-cutter storytelling prevalent in so many movies today.
The first of his films to be released on DVD, The Flowers of Shanghai, is a 1998 film that many critics consider to be Hou's masterwork. It's his first "costume drama," a story about the brothels of 19th century Shanghai where men go to drink, play games and escape work through opium and sex. The world here is isolated and lavish, its social conventions deeply important but muted under an opium haze of ritual and words left unspoken.
Focusing on the inner lives of a few courtesans and the men who visit them, Hou sets up a claustrophobic microcosm of human relations crossed with capitalist intent. There isn't an exterior shot in the film and this, combined with the dark, cluttered interiors of the brothels, creates a powerful and oppressive portrait of the commercial exchange of the flower girls by the women who own them and the men who buy their services.
Flowers of Shanghai is equally constrained in its style – the film is composed of only 39 shots, with most of the takes lasting at least three or four minutes. There aren't any close-ups or cuts within a scene as Hou keeps his camera at a distance, preferring to let the actors give us emotional information, rather than supplying it directionally. The shots themselves are punctuated by fade-outs, indicating the passage of time – sometimes that passage is very short, but at other times, it's from one day to the next. (The only exception to this is an important fade that shows no time passing, one that leads to the only physically violent act in the entire film.)
This sort of esthetic is demanding and some people are going to be bored stiff with Flowers of Shanghai. The other drawback is that, if you haven't seen a Hou Hsiao Hsien movie before, Flowers of Shanghai may not be the best one to start with – his older, present-day films offer characters and situations that are easier to understand.
But until the rest are released, Flowers of Shanghai will more than suffice. For those who are interested, treat it as a challenge. The dominant criteria for movies these days may be drawn from one particular culture, but Flowers of Shanghai is unashamedly uninterested in following that norm. Approached in the right frame of mind, the film is a profoundly moving meditation on the diminution of people's lives under a capitalist system.
Flowers of Shanghai is now available on DVD at better video stores in Calgary. |
