Epidemic of the Golden Flower

Jane came over this morning. It's been two weeks since she was last over and I was relieved to see her. Dust bunnies were running rampant. Jane is my ayi, my cleaning lady cum cultural translator. She betters both my living conditions and my cultural understanding. The yellow chrysanthemums, she told me, are for funerals. White and yellow mums are a big no-no in Chinese culture, never to be used except in the time of death.

In Curse of the Golden Flower, Zhang Yimou relies heavily on the use of yellow chrysanthemums visually, only pretending to use the symbolism for storytelling. Overall the movie was terrible, though Gong Li and her gold hair pins were stunning. Nonetheless, people will probably watch this movie anyways.


Three Wrong Reasons You Will Watch This Movie

1. Sucker for corporate advertising
Surely Sony Pictures will put their back into marketing this thing as art house opulence with cultural intelligence, even though some of the costumes were inspired more by Korea than the Tang Dynasty.

2. Gratuitous breast shots
See what happens when boobs are squeezed out of tops like toothpaste and the women wearing them walk in staccato.

3. Jay Zhou -- featured starlet
Cast I'm sure to attract younger audiences, he was believable for precisely 3 seconds of the entire movie.

I'm not convinced the movie wasn't just an extravagant (and putrid) commercial for Liuligongfang; the ostentatious use of glass would have made the set more beautiful if the set designer had a clue about color. The halls lined with glass columns were like regurgitated gummy worms. See glass panels in doors and windows below. The sweeping scenes of yellow chrysanthemums were beautiful, but anything in volume has a wow factor, doesn't it? Even if Zhang Yimou had filmed mountains made of M&M Peanuts, it would have been impressive. Anyone else miss Zhang Yimou on a smaller budget?

Curse of the Golden Flower -- believe it.


> Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

note
As the signature flower suggests, much death does occur in the director's latest failure to emulate the success of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.