The film Hai shang hua was shown in the U.S. with the title Flowers of Shanghai (1998). It was directed by Hsiao-Hsien Hou.This movie is a Japanese film, but the dialog is in Cantonese, Mandarin, and the Wu language of Shanghai. (Although I haven't seen any confirmation of this, it looked to me as if some of the dialog was dubbed. Possibly the actors were speaking Japanese, but were dubbed into Chinese.)This is a meticulous, careful film about houses of prostitution in Shanghai in 1884. Four houses are represented, but I have to admit that it wasn't always clear to me in which house the action was taking place. These houses, called "Flower Houses," were only for the very wealthy and powerful. The furnishings were elegant, there were servants everywhere, and the women were very beautiful. Unlike what we outsiders know about geishas, these women didn't appear to be skilled in musical instruments or singing. Everyone understands that they perform their professional duties in the bedrooms. However, the houses are used for parties and drinking, with the women present as hostesses and onlookers. (Incidentally, in a film about prostitutes, there's absolutely no visible flesh--all the women are fully. and elegantly. clothed at all times.)The social hierarchy of both the "flowers" and their clients is carefully delineated and known to all. The "Aunties" rule the houses, but the women themselves have a carefully defined status. They are more like indentured servants than slaves, even though they have been purchased from their parents at a young age. Some of the women have their own servants, and the houses are full of cooks and waitresses.This film was shot completely indoors, in sets, in Japan. There's not a single scene shot outside one of the houses. People talk about going for a ride in the park, or for an evening at the opera, but we never see anyone actually do this. Instead, we have a complex indoor social world, with feuds, ambitions, betrayals, and greedy acts all taking place before us. Hou Hsiao-hsien is known for his long takes, and his slow dissolves. Typically, his camera doesn't move at all, although in this film it moves, but only slowly and carefully. This is a film that I highly recommend, although I admit that I wasn't always certain about the specifics of the plots. As I read the IMDb synopsis, I realized that I had missed some key elements. However, I still enjoyed the movie, and it will work--as it did for me--even if you can't always remember which flower is Jasmin and which is Jade.We saw this film as part of a Hou Hsiao-hsien retrospective at the wonderful Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House in Rochester. It will work on DVD, but it you get a chance to see it in a theater, go for it. It's interesting, powerful, and opens up a whole new world.

I don't like Hou Hsiao-Hsien much. He's not a very well known director, but those who do know him often praise him as if he were Christ risen on Earth for the second time. It gets very out of hand. I personally liked two of his earlier films, Dust in the Wind and City of Sadness, but found them rather flawed. The other films I've seen of his, A Time to Live and a Time to Die, The Puppetmaster, Good Men Good Women, and Goodbye South Goodbye, are profoundly flawed with only a little worth each. I wasn't too excited to see Flowers from Shanghai, but its gotten such continuous praise, even from those who had seen only it from Hou, that I decided to give it a chance. I'm happy I did. Very happy, indeed.I had dismissed the burgeoning camera movements in Goodbye South Goodbye as a phony advance in Hou's style. I'm glad I was wrong. In Flowers of Shanghai, Hou effectively pans his camera back and forth and around in spirals in every single shot (and, of course, "shot" in Hou Hsiao-Hsien's vocabulary is a synonym of "scene;" most shots last a very long time). The cinematography, too, is a lot better than it has been (although he has plenty of beautiful shots in his other films, as well). The film seems tinted with gold, and beautiful reds take up most of the space in each frame, until a beautiful blotch of yellow or blue arrives. Mixed with that slowly panning camera (sometimes it's a bit reminiscent of Tarkovsky's shots), that makes for pure sensuousness. It can be simply orgasmic at times. The mise-en-scene is also fabulous. The film takes place in a Shanghai brothel (the "flowers" of the title are the prostitutes), and every inch of the each set is decorated perfectly. And aurally, man, the subtle music is just powerful.It's all so damn beautiful that I kind of ignored what was happening with the characters on screen. It's so damn beautiful that it's rather easy to forget that there are people acting here; their movements and actions are so elegant (and their language sounds so beautiful) that they might as well be thought of as objects, not people. When I finally started to pay more attention to the plot and the characters, it seemed a bit banal. The story revolves around the prostitutes and their frequent customers. The film says nothing new about the subject, and it comes off a bit trite. I'm hoping that I just didn't follow it well enough, that, if I were to buy the DVD and watch it again, I would feel the emotions more. However, I don't believe that that's true. Although his fanatics would fiecely deny it, Hou has never done very well in expressing emotions in his films. Dust in the Wind and City of Sadness are the best in that respect, but take the cheap melodramatics of A Time to Live a Time to Die in comparison. Or take The Puppetmaster: its cinematography is rather boring, and the film comes off as extremely dull. Luckily, I appreciate direction and visual splendor much more than a good story. If I wanted a good story, books would probably be a better medium. Flowers of Shanghai gets a 9/10 from me. I hope that Hou evolves ever more in the future. His style seems perfected in this film (perhaps he should even scrap his signature style and reinvent himself; just a suggestion). Now he needs some substance. Hopefully he'll work again with Wu Nien-Jen, who wrote his Dust in the Wind and City of Sadness, his most substantial films (he also wrote The Puppetmaster, though). I just saw Wu's own directorial debut, Dou-San, this past weekend and it had an emotionally devastating script. I'll cross my fingers!

This is something strange to explain; it's a very aesthetic film. It's certainly very slow for many people, but if you get in it, you lose track of time because it is so much fascinating. A strange sensation. A really beautiful film in all my heart. This is these sorts of films you love more and more when you watch them.If you like cinema, don't miss it. You won't regret it.

"Flowers of Shanhai" is a stunningly beautiful film, elegantly visualized and intriguingly scripted. It explores not only the conflicts between individuals, but also issues of gender and class, and the way in which the people in power find their lives eroding under the influence of opium, foreign currency, and the buying and selling of sexual favors and social influence. The intricate connections between older and younger businessmen, older and younger courtesans, masters, mistresses, and servants, and people of differing degrees of wealth and influence, are all examined as prostitutes try to buy their freedom, or find reasons for staying in the brothels even when someone wants to buy their freedom for them, and as both men and women fix themselves on paths to self-destruction. Calling it too slow paced for a modern audience rather misses the point. Certainly there aren't many car chases or gunfights in it, and if one defines pace only in terms of physical action, it might be fair to call it slow. For audiences with an attention span of longer than 60 seconds and an interest in psychological action rather than physical action, it moves right along. In fact, I found myself having to rewind and view several scenes again because they developed too fast for me to follow as I took in the subtitles. I was very pleased at its lack of Hollywoodism. It's the kind of film "Age of Innocence" might have been if "Age of Innocence" had relied more on acting and less on posing in its cultivation of emotional intensity. In "Flowers of Shanhai," melodramatic action is depicted as a weakness displayed by characters, rather than being exploited as a way of sustaining the audience's interest in a character-based story in which the director has no confidence.