Christopher "Chungking Express" Doyle, the currentcinematographer of choice, does such an amazing job that the convoluted plot almost seems an afterthought. The affluent, influential Pang family has chosen Miss Ruyi (Gong Li), an acknowledged opium addict, as the head of the family as the Qing dynasty falls into ruin; trusted family servant and opium preparer Duanyu (He Saefei) is promoted to co-executor, a position he discovers is roughly equivalent to whipping boy. Things run akilter when Zhangliang (Leslie Cheung), beloved member of a crime family, is asked to score a sting on the Pang family -- in particular, Miss Ruyi. When he starts to romance her, she bites, hard. She rapes Duanyu to sharpen her oriental pleasure techniques, causing him to fall in love with her, and temptress Moon Li uses her newfound experience to win over Zhangliang. Now, two mentally fucked-up men are crazy for the woman, with unimaginable ramifications for the Pang and criminal families, who realize they have to cut their losses fast. Decadence hangs in the air like opium smoke, and so does a tang of its soporific quality (an effect I assume the filmmaker intended), and you can see why it was banned in the PRC. A vocal segment of the critical community is calling this a "soap opera," one of those labels that gets mentioned a few times and soon gets accepted as fact by people who didn't see the movie. But the misunderstanding is reasonable; Chen Kaige stages naturalistic scenes that are pruned to the branch, some of which end before any substantial action has taken place; his scenes are like quotes from a book. This is an oblique drama on the theme of power in post-revolutionary China, where the usual temptations (sex, power, and money) are wedded with one unusual temptation (Gong Li). Aside from which, it has a great twist ending, and images to die for.

(3.5/4)



[Reviewed by Steve Spinali]