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Flowers of Shanghai Director: Hsiao-hsien Hou Number of Items: 1 Format: Color, Widescreen Audience Rating: Unrated Running Time: 113 minutes Studio: Fox Lorber Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2002-04-16 Buy from Amazon

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 25 Average rating: 3.0 "Restrained? Muted? Boring!" This movie was tedious. Absolutely nothing happens. Blocking, which is supposed to reflect the tension between the actors, is nonexistent. In fact, the characters hardly move. The cinematographer's only trick is a slow pan; there are no cutaway shots or close ups. It's almost as if the director sought to evoke in the viewer the opium-induced stupor many of his characters reside in. I am no stranger to Chinese cinema; I own a few dozen titles. Nor am I unsympathetic to movies with serious themes; in fact, that is precisely what I find entrancing about Chinese cinema. But this movie will, quite simply, bore you to tears. "BORING..." I love asian films but this is one of the most boring movie made. Throughout the whole movie, i couldnt even see anyones face and I felt like falling asleep. "Winstar = 1 star" Film: 5 stars/ dvd transfer: 1 star I would strongly urge anyone interested in purchasing this DVD to research if they can find another version rather than this version. Belive me, this film is worth it. Winstar you've burned me yet again. I've bought 5 other titles from them, and all except one were total pieces of ..., transfer-wise. It's like they don't even care at all. Hou-Hsiao-hsien and Francios Truffault deserver better, and so do you. "Glimpse into Chinese culture" I was absorbed in this film because of my fascination with cultures different from my own. We see a small portion of Chinese culture in the late 1800s...the interior scenes of a Shanghai brothel with its "flower" ladies. I studied the clothing, the hair styles, the mannerisms, the interactions between men and women, modes of expressing feelings, the household decor...and learned from it. This is not a fast-paced movie; no intimate acts are portrayed, in fact, I found it to have a languid feeling, with a lot of time spent with the men and women eating, gossiping, manipulating one another, smoking opium, and repeatedly playing a favorite game that looks like "paper, scissors, rock". Yet I found this glimpse into this portion of society fascinating...women who probably lived a pampered and sheltered life compared to the masses of Chinese women at the time, yet hoping for someone to love and rescue them from their form of slavery, and upper class Chinese men who seem to have nothing else to do but hang out with the flower ladies, and chum with other male clients. I was interested in their social courtesies, the emotional maneuvering of the women upon the men, and the tenderness shown by one of the Chinese men towards his "flower lady", contradictory to the idea of Chinese women being subservient. Because this movie was made in China, I assume the sociology of the movie must have some accuracy, and therefore, it was for me a cultural lesson. "Hookers and hookahs." Well, somebody may have finally beaten Carl Dreyer's record (e.g., *Gertrud*) for fewest cuts in a feature film. I'd be surprised if there's much more than 20 cuts in Hou Hsiao-Hsien's *Flowers of Shanghai*. I know this film is Chinese, but it's almost the cinematic equivalent of a Japanese tea ceremony: infinitely perfect, and not caring if it requires an infinity to attain perfection. Paucity of edits aside, the camera is still extremely busy in the movie: if a student of film wants to learn about CAMERA MOVEMENT, this is the place to come. The camera gently, slowly encircles any given scene, allowing us plenty to look at and consider, whether it's the objects in a room or the expression on a peripheral character's face. But the movement is never so dreamy as to neglect to include what's of dramatic interest. Or put it another way: each frame exists in its own universe, charged with its own meaning. Needless to say, the Occidental viewer had better come to grips with this Oriental perspective tout suite, or he'll find himself bored to death. It's nothing less than a different language of cinematic narrative. What the hell's it about, anyway? Incredibly beautiful prostitutes ("flowers") and their wealthy clients in 1880's Shanghai. All of the scenes occur in several high-end brothels, and only certain rooms therein. Much time is taken showing us a Chinese drinking game oddly similar to our rock-paper-scissors, and even more time is expended in the filling, lighting, and smoking of opium pipes and tobacco hookahs. The plot loosely follows the amorous career of a wealthy gentleman (Tony Leung, very expressive). We learn that the courtesans he's involved with are as tetchy as any Southern belle, and hold out hope for marriage. The girls' dreams of security are what create the prime tension in the movie: who will achieve success, who will fail? In the meantime, changes are nibbling in the corners of this insulated world of languid ease and lovemaking: that roving camera can't help but pick up the modern Victorian knick-knacks that decorate the rooms. The tall European clocks in the corners are counting down an end to the static quietism in *Flowers of Shanghai*: the viewer is dimly aware that the Shanghai brothels will soon be made obsolete by an encroaching Western modernism. The movie is a daguerreotype of a way of life on the brink of extinction. It's also a masterpiece of its kind. Recommended for adventurous viewers with a certain amount of stamina, however. [The DVD by Winstar doesn't look all that good. Lots of bleeding color and even LINES across the picture. A movie as formally beautiful as this deserves considerably better treatment. Criterion, I'm talking to you.]