Opens Friday December 22 CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER directed by Zhang Yimou, written by Zhang and Cao Yu, with Chow Yun-Fat, Gong Li and Jay Chou. A Sony Classics/Mongrel Media release. Subtitled. 113 minutes. For venues and times, see Movies, page 91. Rating: NNN Rating: NNN
John Grierson once declared, in reference to Josef von Sternberg, “When a director dies, he becomes a cinematographer.”
The great Chinese director Zhang Yimou began his career as a cinematographer, but with Curse Of The Golden Flower he’s become an art director, and this film is a prime piece of fabric porn.
Set in the Forbidden City during the Tang Dynasty (10th century), the film deals with massive eruptions of jealousy, murder and incestuous sex in the royal family, which lets Zhang wander endlessly through the elaborately painted and fabric-strewn corridors of the palace.
About the third time a character and his or her retinue stride down a hall done in simmering shades of pink, lilac, gold and green, I thought, “This is why I stopped doing acid.”
They could legitimately call this thing Dynasty, in both the royal succession and Aaron Spelling senses of the word, with Gong Li set on high diva as the empress who’s having an affair with her husband’s first son, while her husband is slowly poisoning her and she’s manoeuvring to put her own son on the throne.
And it looks fabulous.
People expecting the kind of martial arts spectacular Zhang delivered in Hero and House Of Flying Daggers had best look elsewhere. This is an imperial family drama with some battle scenes but none of the electrifying individual confrontations that are the hallmark of a great martial arts film. Indeed, it runs a whole hour with but a single non-lethal faceoff between the Emperor (Chow Yun-Fat) and Prince Jie (Jay Chou).
It’s very well constructed. All the things that are set up in the first hour pay off in the second. If you liked The Emperor And The Assassin, directed by Zhang’s mentor, Chen Kaige, you’ll probably like Curse Of The Golden Flower, which has an even madder Gong Li performance and a more retina-shredding colour scheme.
But it’s definitely for people who like their melodrama over-the-top.
Note to Zhang: If you’re going to bring in the ninja-like assassin squad an hour into the picture and give them six kinds of impossible physical moves, you have to make us believe this is a world where that might happen. Nothing in the first hour of Curse Of The Golden Flower establishes this Chinese historical setting as one of those worlds.
