Flowers of Shanghai (1998) a Beautiful, Languid Taiwanese Movie for the patient viewer (Review)

The first thing to note about Hou Hsaio-hsien’s dreamlike and vague period drama, Flowers of Shanghai, is just how unhurried it is with plot and pacing. If you are not a fan of slow cinema or don’t like films that are dense and are stray observations on character and mood, then Flowers of Shanghai is a difficult film to recommend since not a lot happens. Based on an obscure Qing dynasty-era novel called The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai, Flowers of Shanghai chronicles the lives of five “flower girls” in 19^th-century China – Crimson, Jade, Jasmin, Pearl, and Emerald.

I want to make this clear – Flowers of Shanghai requires some knowledge of Chinese history to appreciate fully. Thankfully, Criterion has employed the ever knowledgeable Tony Rayns; he sheds so much light on the Hsiao-hsien retelling of the Han Bangqing source text. In Rayns’s video introduction, the “flower houses” and “flower girls” are this period’s version of brothels and courtesans. However, the customers don’t go to these courtesans for sex – they shower the flower girls with gifts and have intimate conversations about their private lives.

Sounds simple enough, and any hints at sex and violence are kept off-screen. Nonetheless, Flowers of Shanghai gets exceedingly complex The film is broken into three plot strands – the main one involving the meek Master Wang (Tony Leung) torn between choosing a love life with his old sweetheart Crimson and the much younger Jasmin. The second plotline has Jade yearning for her lover and they make a promise. If neither of them can marry, then in Romeo and Juliet fashion, they will die together. The third and final subplot looks at Emerald and her desire to abandon the courtesan lifestyle for good. However, such freedom is hopeless – since all these flower girls were bought by “aunties” (the owners of each brothel) at a cheap price, the courtesan’s value inflates into a price that no one will cough up the money over (3,000 Silver Taels in Emerald’s case). No doubt, it’s slavery and human trafficking.

At its rawest, Flowers of Shanghai is obtuse. However, once the viewer settles into the film’s rhythm, it is a rewarding experience no less to the entrancing style. I failed to mention that the film consists of only 40 or fewer shots. For nearly all of Flowers of Shanghai, Hsiao-hsien’s camera slowly drifts across the room to focus on one side of a group of characters before moving back to the other side and so forth. Hsiao-hsien also refuses to edit within these calm scenes of people simply talking among themselves (minus two occasions late on in the runtime). So all of these scenes are shot in one unbroken take each. Hsiao-hsien follows this up with a fade to black to signal the end of a scene before starting the next with a fade-in.

With the help of the opium haze and the flickering light from the oil lamps, Flowers of Shanghai creates a hypnotic atmosphere that allows the viewer to dip in and out of the dialogue. Not necessarily follow the plot, but to make a mental note of where it is going. Hsiao-hsien creates a space that allows the audience to be a person in the room with these courtesans. Whether that would a drunken party participant or an eavesdropper listening in on a private negotiation: it is impressive and consistent storytelling. If this sounds like the next step into the Taiwanese New Wave, then this Criterion disc is a worthy addition to the collection. For anyone else, Flowers of Shanghai is an acquired taste. If you don’t light world cinema that is aimless in style and light on plot, then stay away. But it offers a unique viewing experience that I found captivating and admirable for all the right reasons.

THANKS FOR READING AIDAN’S REVIEW OF FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI

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