Flowers of Shanghai – Hai shang hua (1998)

Directed by: Hou Hsiao-Hsien | 113 minutes | drama | Actors: Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, Michiko Hada, Michelle Reis, Carina Lau, Jack Kao, Rebecca Pan, Vicky Wei, Hsuan Fang, Annie Shizuka Inoh, Ming Hsu, Josephine A. Blankstein, Pauline Chan, Simon Chang, Tony Chang, Shui Chit Cheung, Wei-kuo Chiang, Hui-ni Hsu, Yiu-Ming Lee, Yu-Hang Lee, Yu-han Lin, Firebird Liu, Tsai-erh Luo, Moon Wang, Yan Xie

‘Flowers of Shanghai’ by director Hou Hsiao-Hsien transports you to a time and place that feels almost alien. The film immerses you in a world that for Europeans is most reminiscent of the French court of Louis XIV. Everything radiates abundance. Yet the scheming at ‘this court’ sounds significantly different from that of the French. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s film is based on a long-lost late nineteenth-century Chinese book called “Hai Shang Hua”. Around the eighties of the twentieth century, someone accidentally came across this novel again and it had to be translated, because the characters use a very specific dialect. Like the book, ‘Flowers of Shanghai’ is about men from different social strata in nineteenth-century China who frequent brothels in British and American concessions in Shanghai. However, paid sex was not the focus of these brothels. It was more about the possibility of love between a man and woman. The men and ‘flower girls’ tried to court each other within the strict rules of contact between man and woman, in which marriages were the normal procedure. This could take years.

You have to get used to the pace of the film, because ‘Flowers of Shanghai’ challenges us from the start with slow camera movements from left to right along the twinkling mise-en-scene. Moreover, certain places and situations keep recurring. The film mainly considers the life of the flower girls as one of routine and rituals. But that does not immediately make this view dull, because almost no detail escapes the eye of the camera. Something dramatic always happens, no matter how small. Moreover, the decoration is almost the pinnacle of art direction. The makers’ sense of late nineteenth-century Chinese fashion would make director Wong Kar-Wai (including ‘In the Mood for Love’, 2000) jealous. It’s all splendor on screen, but of the suffocating kind – the flower girls live in a golden cage. Director Hou Hsiao-Hsien also reinforces that feeling by literally not going outside. Throughout the film, the flower girls shuffle around in a couple of opulently filled rooms, as if to avoid daylight. These women are in permanent isolation and perhaps marriage to a sugar daddy is the least unpleasant outcome.

Despite the fact that the film takes its time, the plot is unfortunately not easy to follow. Sometimes faces are interchangeable and the actors usually speak in a whisper, as if all this has to be kept secret and you always, like a voyeur, keep a certain distance. In addition, the elliptical mounting ensures that you cannot accurately determine when something takes place and approximately how much time it takes. You don’t even know what time it is in the day, because the drama only shows itself in the twilight of oil lamps, so that day and night fade into one. That’s why it seems as if ‘Flowers of Shanghai’ asks itself: is a plot like a well-running clock really real when you look at life? Is our limited time here no more than a succession of moments in a certain cultural straitjacket? Nevertheless, you would like to see some more cultural-historical context in this case. However, in the end Hou Hsiao-Hsien is anything but obligated to do so. Ironically enough, precisely because certain clarity is lacking, ‘Flowers of Shanghai’ remains haunted in the head for longer in this way.

The more you think about this film, the weirder and more absurd is the class sensibility in ‘Flowers of Shanghai’. Yet something of that nature has happened. As if Hou traveled back in time and peered like a documentary maker at the struggles of people in that specific time and place. The position of women is the most poignant. These women, sometimes dumped by parents at the brothels because of poverty, grew up as high-class entertainment girls for high-ranking lords in Chinese society. But what about those girls who didn’t make it to top courtesan or sought-after wedding trophy? In the end you are left with an indefinable feeling.

Sometimes ‘Flowers of Shanghai’ can move, but more often it is: what an exceptional composition or what about the colonial influence in those concessions? As if the viewer is also intoxicated by the richly flowing opium in the film. You step into a dream together with the characters, but you don’t necessarily come out the wiser. Nevertheless, if ‘Flowers of Shanghai’, a 1998 Cannes film festival favorite, is to your taste, it’s highly recommended that you seek out more of Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s works, such as ‘A City of Sadness’ (1989) and ‘The Puppet Master’ (1993). Too bad this isn’t very easy. That is why we pay tribute to Eye Filmmuseum, because it is certainly daring to give such a cinematic opium intoxication on the big screen another chance in the Netherlands.