Flowers of Shanghai

Hou Hsiou-hsien's Flowers of Shanghai (1998) is a film that is self-contained, so that it is purposely limited to scenes at a Chinese brothel in the 1880s. Examining the harsh reality of life inside the brothel, where women entertained men yet always played second-fiddle to the flippant desires of men's wandering eye, the camera never leaves the confinement of the interior walls, and, in this way, Hou articulates the isolation that exists alongside the extravagence.

"Aunties" would purchase these girls from their destitute parents at puberty and beautify them, making certain that the girls, later called "flowers," would be able to entertain and please the upper class men who visited the brothel. The women, for their part, received much opulence from their suitors and would frequently keep a suitor for several years, which allowed the woman to secure her place at the brothel but also paid for the family back home. Hou grants that the flower girl for the women in this film was seen as a position of privilege, in that she could guarantee her parents and relatives an income apart from whatever meager offerings that they could manage.

Because of the opulent lifestyle, there is a manner in which the women are actually given agency and a sense of power, though if they are not able to connive themselves into a privileging state, they will languish in despair. One of the suitors, the melancholic Wang (Tony Leung) is shifting loyalties between Emerald (Michelle Reis) and the younger Crimson (Michiko Hada). However, Emerald will have none of it, and the way in which she connives Wang into continuing their five year long relationship testifies to the authority that she wields around the house. There are four concurrent stories at work in Flowers of Shanghai, and Hou balances them all into a narrative that is elegant, elliptical, and deeply understated, though always riveting.

There is a formalism at work in the film, so that emotions and lives are stated with a minimalist touch, repeating scenes where the men play Mah jong while the women look on, drinking, gossiping, but underneath this surface there exists an emotional core to Hou's film that is deeply resonant. Very fascinating, though the style may be challenging at first.

Flowers of Shanghai: 10/10