The Curse of Golden Flowers

It has been very very long time since I walked out of a movie last time. But I have not been to any movie for quite a while. Given the cynical level I am in now, I should be walking out of movies a lot more often if I were a regular movie goer.

I think this movie makes the end of Zhang YiMou. He is running out of tricks to lure westerners, not even Gong Li and Chow Yun Fat can breath hope into this piece of trash. There is no logic, no reasoning of why the king (Chow Yun Fat) wanted to kill the queen (Gong Li). Most scenes were taken place in the too colourful, obsessively ornated interior of a palace. I wonder how that feels to wake up in such a place after a long night of drinking.

The history background was all so wrong, since the background was set in the late Tang dynasty (around 9th centry), where the empire was split into 5 large clans and 10 other smaller clans. And then, the palace scene was film in forbidden city, which only became the capital after Yuan dynasty (13th century). The only eye-catching scene is how those parlor maids dressed in Tang dynasty fashion, showing off their breasts in everyway they can. They dress in something very similar to the western corset, which squeezes up the 2 pockets of white meat, that trembles while the ladies walk. It is actually a scary scene, I am telling you. But I admire Zhang's effort to find so many pretty looking girls with delicate skin.

If Zhang is trying to impress the west with the fantasy-like late-Tang dynasty culture, he should have paid more attention to the details. Even I can tell, in the close up, the handkerchif Gong Li used to dry up her sweat looks like the cheap nylon sold in sourvernir shop in Bejing Capital airport.