The Golden Flower Is, Indeed, Cursed

I just saw Curse of the Golden Flower (Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia ) by famed director Yimou Zhang of Raise the Red Lantern and House of Flying Daggers fame. It features the incomparable Gong Li (or, Li Gong, by the Chinese form of Last Name First).

This was a Shakespearean parable which turned very cartoony at a certain point. The San Francisco audience I saw it with tonight all cracked up at the climax when the soap-opera-ness of the quick series of close-up reaction shots (her reaction! his reaction! her reaction to his reaction! him looking at his reaction to her reacting to his reaction to her reaction!). And then, after an exhausting and disorienting wild ride (or, for me, a refreshing holiday family romp of blood and mayhem-- I felt quite rested, with a much better mood than I went in with), we were unable to do the traditional San Francisco audience applause at the end of the opening night's first showing because-- the credits rolled to the tune of a sappy POP SONG! It was a 9th-10th century AD period piece, with no music - almost no music at all- that had us all hypnotized by sparse panicky noise and uneven breathing and clashing weapons- and the spell was wiped away by an upbeat contemporary pop song! Weird, weird bad choice. Kind of a stunningly bad choice.

The rundown:

Jesus Figure: none! Nobody was driven to their ruin and then redeemed to greater glory, nobody. A classic tragedy.

Lesbian Movie Standard: met. Two women have a conversation about something other than a man. Gong Li's Empress character has a conversation with Chen Jin's mysterious Physician's Wife character about the way she was being poisoned.

Gay Character: the Empress' eunuch, who helped foment the revolt. He only gets a brief screen appearance, but there he is.

Guilty Pleasure: the bouncing boobs in those tight push-up bodices. Even one set of boobs decorated with shiny gold butterfly adornments (watch for it in one of the early scenes where Gong Li is taking her "medicine").

One review I just read notes that this is basically a lot like Raise the Red Lantern (the rottenness of royal/ upperclass living) but with melodrama and soap opera-ness and flying martial arts scenes. I still recommend R. the R. Lantern over this or almost any movie out there, period. It is a completely awe-inspiring movie. This, not so much. But still worth the price of seeing it in a real theatre. Really, the stage setting of carved rainbow-flourite palace lattice-work walls is STUNNING. My favorite scene is the mysterious Physician's Wife spotting her - we later learn - son through the translucent rainbow flourite lattice-work, and following him at a run - so the rainbow gemstone blurs... and then suddenly it's a fight scene (and that little ninja lady can really fight!).