Flowers of Shanghai (Film)

1998. Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien.



Context:
Hou's career: A shift towards added formalism (choreographed near-constant pans, fades-to-black). For the first time a move to a setting beyond living memory. His third film made in co-production with Shochiki studio, with again Shozo Ichiyama at the helm.

Origins: Based on Han Ziyun (Han Bangqing) novel, written in 1892 and in Wu dialect, and Eileen Chang's 1970s (Mandarin) translation of it (which Hou read). Initially Hou had been planning and researching for a film about Zheng Chenggung, 'Father of Taiwan', who drove away the Dutch in the 17th century, but as part of the research read Flowers of Shanghai. He was so drawn to it that he abandoned the initial project to film this book instead.

Imagined China: The first Hou film fully set in Mainland China (not even any mention of Taiwan) --- although it was all filmed on sets built in Taiwan. Bergala notes that for the first time Hou has to visualise a world from his imagination, closing his eyes to the world in front of him to penetrate a Classical China.




The Film:
Structure: Three strands, each one centered on a different woman. ... an emotional cold war.... four banquet scenes... scenes of meals or pipes being prepared, drinking games, negotiations and particularly conversations, revolving around gossip.

Setting: Set in the English concession of 1890s (Qing dynasty era) Shanghai.... the men are elite affluent Han, the women are trapped as 'high-class prostitutes' within gilded prisons...
The film has exquisite decors, costumes and sets, low-key lighting (oil lanterns, candles etc). Note the one close-up insert shot (very rare for Hou) of the whole film, is to a golden hairpin (?)

Style: Slow fluid arcing camera movements. Little action or drama or conflict, which are mostly elided, and in fact the most dramatic events take place offscreen during narrative ellipses, and are then only made known to the audience by asides in conversation between other characters. The film is far more about atmosphere, of a lazy-rhythmed leisurely world, than plot.

Soundtrack: slow, simple electronic droning, almost ever-present, composed by Yoshimiro Hanno, adds to the lazy, leisurely pace and opiate feel of the rhythm and the pans...

" Because Hou's cinematic syntax is so different from the mainstream (long, slow takes; dearth of close-ups), the range of his style tends to get overlooked, but this is a film that's visually quite distinct from anything else he ever did. Every shot is languorous and opiated, with a drifting camera nodding in and out of consciousness: every single shot begins with a fade in from black and ends with a fade out, even when action between them is continuous, and more than that, the fades to and from black seem to be orchestrated on the set, not in post-production, as the onscreen light sources (candles and lanterns) are the first to appear and last to vanish in the gloom - a beautiful effect derived from Welles. It's also entirely confined to opulent interiors, with characters almost always in medium shot. In the world of this film, the kinetic travelling shots of Goodbye, South, Goodbye (my favourite of Hou's 90s films) are as unthinkable as its extreme long-shots. Of course, these aesthetic choices are absolutely appropriate for a film that's all about social confinement and mannered, moderated intimacy.

Hou's narrative obliqueness is also strongly in evidence, though in a different manner than most of his films. The film is quite talky, and most of the talk is gossip. And that gossip is where the action takes place. In a world in which women are obliged to be preoccupied about their social standing but are largely excluded from social interaction and discourse, gossip is their lifeblood, and reputations and self-respect stand or fall on what their more socially mobile acquaintances (the men) are saying about people the women may never have met. When major plot actions finally do occur on screen in the final act, it's quite shocking, but not really any less shocking than when what we assume to be the film's major plot thread (Master Wang's relationships with Crimson and Jasmin) is wrapped up in an aside between two other characters." - http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=13398&start=225#p507045

Power relationships: Those controlled (the women) try to wrest control through the restrictions of their limitations, behind the scenes, and through influence and circuitous machinations... Gossip, a key currency in this world. Gossip, information, can be power, such that the 'flower girls' can act as power brokers by revealing news etc.

"The “flowers” are doubly bound: first to their madams (or "aunties"), and then to their primary callers, who are expected to support the flowers’ households. Hou then layers on further complexities: women who’ve grown old within the system and see no need to escape it; another who looks for a way to buy her freedom; yet another who lucks into a marriage with a witless young caller and another, more dubious, kind of freedom. All of the women strive toward different lives, different options, but all of these possibilities are thoroughly and oppressively mediated by prevailing historical conditions. For all the men’s obvious economic and physical power over the women, Hou seems generally unconcerned with explicating the male perspective here—in this liminal space the bound women have an odd kind of upper hand. Even the film is divided thusly, with recurring chapters named for each of the main women, yet the movie never feels like a collection of short stories. Hou’s formalism irons their disparate stories into a unified whole."

The brothel as metaphor for Taiwan, its location within the foreign concessions of Shanghai affording it an independent status.

Frustrates promises of exoticised orientalism?