Zhang Yimou's latest epic is a fruity cinematic souffle, writes Donald Clarke
UNLESS you live in Liberace's old house, you are unlikely, in your daily life, to encounter anything as gloriously, vulgarly opulent as Zhang Yimou's latest Chinese epic. Filmed with a grain and a shaded boldness that recall early Technicolor, this swirling kaleidoscope of a picture will, depending on your taste for too much pink and not enough grey, either send you into hyperglycaemic raptures or cause you to vomit into your popcorn.
Indeed, Curse of the Golden Flower is so visually arresting that - despite starring such torrents of charisma as Chow Yun-Fat and Gong Li - it sometimes takes on the quality of a dizzying magic-eye puzzle. Somewhere among all these banners and robes and jade and gold there is an emperor and his wronged wife. Let your eyes slip out of focus and you may be able to see them.
The picture takes us back to the latter years of the Tang Dynasty, where we find Chow's suspicious potentate plotting against Gong Li's haughty, severe consort. The emperor, feigning concern for his wife's health, has persuaded her to take daily draughts of a mysterious green medicine.
When the empress discovers that the potion contains an ingredient designed to drive her insane, she persuades one of her sons - there's a fair bit of uncomfortable incest action in Flower - to join her in organising a coup. An hour later there are enough flailing warriors on screen to cause even the producers of 300 to draw a respectful breath.
For those so minded, there is plenty to whinge about here. Admirers of earlier Zhang films such as Red Sorghum and Raise the Red Lantern may wonder why he no longer seems interested in combining his undeniable talent for spectacle with any psychological insight. One might also ask why his recent pictures - Zhang also directed Hero and House of Flying Daggers - seem populated solely with mythical archetypes.
These are fair questions, but no sensible viewer could deny the sumptuous pleasures to be had from this big, fruity cinematic souffle. Aside from anything else, it features the best flying Ninjas in recent memory.
