Curse of the Golden Flower
Last night we headed to the funky English-subtitled cinema in the Isetan department store in Shanghai. I couldn’t give any more precise directions if I wanted… I’ve just got no idea where we were :)
The film we went to watch was the new Zhang Yimou film: Curse of the Golden Flower.
The poster didn’t inspire quite the same enthusiasm his previous films, House of Flying Daggers, Hero and Raise the Red Lantern. Zhang Yimou’s later films have all been truly stunning and packed full of incredible action choreography… this film was similar, but at the same time, lacked a lot that the predecessors offered.
The film was largely set inside the Forbidden City, which had been tarted up with lots of yellows, golds and sparkly bits. All nice bright colours… until the projector packed in and we were left with about half of the light output and knackered sound.
The main characters were the Emperor, Empress, three princes and one of the maids. It was all very comical, I thought, which wasn’t helped by the computer generated imagery that only just equalled the closing scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The plot was weak, some of the acting was pretty poor and the overall result was a real disappointment by comparison to his other films.
I’d recommend giving this one a miss.
Tags: Films