Thanks for the memories!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I came to this movie because Mark Lee Ping Bin did the cinematography, and I was not let down. For a movie that never leaves the four walls of various brothels throughout Shanghai, each scene really fills up the screen, has irresistible colors and lighting and splendor, only to fade softly into black and light up into something new. Imagine how delighted I was to find that the cinematography was matched by an equally strong concept, and that the film is basically a series of vitriolic or pining Craigstlist missed connections ads nestled within an intricate and iron-clad social hierarchy.A fun touch: in the first conversation of the film, one master tells a tale over dinner, sitting around the table with his friends and their companions. It is the story of Crystal (whose outcome will be revealed later in the film) and her lover, a young patron named Yufu. The speaker says that Crystal and Yufu are joined together like toffee, star-crossed lovers who can't get enough of each other. Soon, a debate breaks out: is this type of love a healthy way to live? A few men balk at the idea that growing gaunt from staring into one another's eyes is acceptable. Then the film drags us through countless loveless or otherwise fraught relationships where everyone is withering, suicidal or raging. Seems that in 19th century Shanghai, you just can't win.Watch out for Master Wang...he's the pesky stray thread that undoes the whole damned sweater.

First, a disclaimer: I love so-called "art films", from Cocteau and Eisenstein to David Lynch and Krystof Kieslowski. I have a long attention span and am willing to extend considerable effort towards appreciating any work of art.Having said that, The Flowers of Shanghai was largely a disappointment. Yes, the sets and costuming are sumptuous. True, the mood evoked by the film is seductive. And the subject matter--the relationships between courtesans and their clients--is at least provocative. But for a number of reasons, Hou fails to deliver a film that rises above those elements.The reasons are many. First, the plot is minimal--hardly compelling--mostly relying upon the petty machinations between the courtesans and the clients who try not to become too involved with them. But such a minimal plot can only engage if we become involved in the characters, and this is very difficult to do.That's problem number two: the characters simply aren't compelling. The men tend to be equivocal and emotionally distant. The women tend to be shallow and manipulative. Since there are essentially no close-up shots, and the physical expressions are very restrained, we have no sense of people's emotional states. There is not one character that we can really care about.Third: the editing is leisurely. Really leisurely. Glacial. Very few directors can pull off a five minute interior shot with almost no dialogue or action; Ozu was one. But Hou--although better than many contemporary directors--isn't up to Ozu's level by a long shot. Hou's scenes, unlike Ozu's, don't so much engender our contemplation as they engender tedium. A director has to be able to recognize when a scene has come to the end of its life; this he doesn't seem to be able to do.A note to the curious: every shot in this film is an interior shot; you never see the outdoors--not even the sky through the windows. And despite the subject matter and the warnings of adult content on the box, there are no sex scenes; there is no nudity. Structure-wise, the film depicts three activities: men playing "rock, paper, scissors" around a table, people having their little dramas in private, and people brooding.That's basically it.I would like to be able to say that The Flowers of Shanghai was more than just a 2-hours-plus visual curiosity, but it simply isn't. And more the shame because of its wasted potential.

I saw this film at Cannes where delegates, including would-be intelligent critics emerged from the film scratching their heads and mumbling 'interesting' - a sure sign that they couldn't understand a word of it. For me it had been an epiphanous experience.Six months later Cahiers du Cinema voted it the best film of its year...I am sure there is a word to describe the effect of the film, but I can't lay my hand on it, so I will say 'emotionally disjoint'. As the men sit around playing Mah Jong talking, generally of trivia, huge emotional dramas are going on, but obliquely, in relation to the girls in the brothel. The effect is crushing. I thought, while watching, mainly of Jean-Marie Straub as it has a minimalist side, but with such greater emotional power and resonance. It is so tragic that this magnificent film has had such a poor release in the west - no theatrical distribution at all in the UK...

This hypnotically beautiful film may recall a dream, but the material world of money and power, indentured servitude and beatings everywhere intrudes on it. We discover in the contrasting stories of Emerald, Pearl, Crimson, Jade, and Crystal, how some survive as "flower girls" and others are crushed. Far from being boring or cold, the film is compelling dramatically and emotionally. "Flowers of Shanghai" seems to contain boundless reserves of sadness and rage -- it is as if the sex and violence are not on screen because Hou cannot bear to show them. If "Flowers of Shanghai" is an opium dream, as many have said, the opium is both bringing pleasure and suppressing pain."Flowers of Shanghai" shows compassion for its characters, both the innocents and those who survive through cynical manipulation. The scene-length takes in medium shots work to establish respect for each person within the film, while at the same time bringing about a kind of "rectification of names," systematically exposing the hypocrisy of the brothels. It's appropriate that one of the few moments of violent action in the film occurs when Master Wang smashes the exquisite interior decoration in a room: "Flowers of Shanghai" shows the seductive beauty of the brothel then reveals it to be a cage. Everyone in the film is on multiple levels unfree: the women are financially bound to the brothels and dependent on the whims of their clients, and almost everyone is addicted to opium.The film never leaves the brothels. This expresses how the brothels in fact own the women. However, as Stephen Teo noted in CinemaScope, there's another detail that's easy to overlook: the women's bound feet prevent them from easily walking more than a few feet.