Curse Of The Golden Flower (Screen Daily Review)

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Curse Of The Golden Flower (Man Cheng Jin Dai Huang Jin Jia)

Mike Goodridge in Los Angeles 13 November 2006 06:00

Dir: Zhang Yimou. China. 2006. 114mins.

China’s most expensive production to date has every yuang up on the screen. One of the most sumptuous and almost absurdly opulent spectacles on screen in recent memory, Zhang Yimou’s $45m epic Curse Of the Golden Flower is fortunately not just a pretty face. It’s also a meaty, blood-soaked melodrama filled with intrigue, deception and incest that would make Lady Macbeth and Emperor Nero proud.

A warm reception should be forthcoming from critics and arthouse audiences around the world, although Golden Flower is short on action and unlikely to crossover to the young males who lapped up Zhang’s martial arts spectaculars Hero and House Of Flying Daggers.

But chances for awards recognition are high; the film is China’s submission for the Academy Award and stands a good shot at a nomination. And despite its foreign-language status, it is almost impossible to imagine that it won’t be acknowledged in cinematography (as was House) and design categories. Curse Of The Golden Flower opens in the US and China next month.

Zhang previously explored the gender politics of a powerful household in his masterful Raise The Red Lantern (1991) set in the early 20th century. In Curse Of The Golden Flower, a less disciplined but more lustily enjoyable affair, he goes back to 10th-century China to the imperial palace of the Tang dynasty, one of the most flamboyantly wealthy and ostentatious reigns in the country’s history.

After an absence of three years, the emperor (Chow Yun Fat) returns to the palace with his second son Prince Jai (Jay Chou) ostensibly to celebrate the Chong Yang festival (chrysanthemum festival) but in reality to decide which of his three sons will be his successor.

While he was away, his estranged wife the empress (Gong Li) has been sleeping with his eldest, favourite son, crown prince Wan (Liu Ye), who was born of his now dead first wife. The empress is kept medicated by the emperor and the imperial doctor (Ni Dahong) for supposed anemia, but the emperor has recently introduced some new deadly ingredients into her daily brew.

Meanwhile Wan is having a secret affair with the imperial doctor’s daughter Chan (Li Man) and, to the empress’ chagrin, he is planning to leave the palace for a distant province with his lover and abandon his entitlement to the throne to Jai. The third son prince Yu (Qin Junjie) is still a teenager but he harbours his own youthful ambitions to usurp Wan and Jai as his father’s successor.

The empress has more plausible secret plans to seize power but she is increasingly prone to fits of fever and has developed an obsession with the golden flower emblems of the forthcoming festival.

Suspicious of the medication her husband forces her to take, she hires a spy to discover what is the new ingredient which is making her ill. The spy turns out to be the imperial doctor’s wife (Chen Jin), who, it emerges, has her own reasons for aiding the empress.

As the festival approaches, the imperial doctor is given a new posting to a remote region of China with his wife and daughter but on their way they are attacked by the emperor’s assassins who attempt to kill them all. Chan and her mother race back to the palace for a final showdown with the emperor and his decidedly dysfunctional family.

Like Red Lantern, Golden Flower takes place mostly within the confines of the palace itself, the only other location being a countryside inn. But Zhang and his cinematographer Zhao are not confined by their locations; on the contrary they sweep exuberantly through the golden hallways, corridors, bed chambers, apothecaries, dining areas and courtyards of the palace as if they were gliding through forests and mountain ranges.

The palace interiors and exterior are a wonder of design and set decoration, the costumes, hair and makeup staggeringly ornate, the colour palette of yellows and reds that Zhang has created is meticulous and breathtaking. The bloody battle in the forecourt of the palace at the film’s climax as a golden army is massacred on a bed of chrysanthemums is eye-popping. It’s almost too much visual splendour and information to digest in one sitting.

None of the twisted machinations of the operatic plot come as a surprise but the pleasure is all in the malicious relish of the performances, most notably from the magnificent Gong Li who quivers, sobs and heaves her way through the high drama, her bosom collapsing out of her jewel-encrusted bustier, her head bedecked in elaborate jewels and hairdos. One minute warmly embracing her children, the next plotting against her husband with icy vengeance in her eyes, the next tearfully gulping down a poison which she knows is driving her insane, Gong is a spectacle in herself.

She is matched by Chow Yun Fat, impressively imperious as the slightly demented emperor, and Liu Ye, who is effectively tortured as the unhappy oldest son.

Production companies/backers
Film Partner International Inc
Edko Films Ltd
Beijing New Picture Film Co

US distribution
Sony Pictures Classics

International sales
Edko Films Ltd
Focus Features

Producers
Bill Kong
Zhang Weiping

Screenplay
Zhang Yimou
Wu Nan
Bian Zhihong

Cinematography
Zhao Xiaoding

Production design
Huo Tingxiao

Editor
Cheng Long

Music
Shigeru Umebayashi

Main cast
Chow Yun Fat
Gong Li
Jay Chou
Liu Ye
Chen Jin
Ni Dahong
Li Man
Qin Junjie