Curse of the Golden Flower

“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” did a lot for martial arts epics as a genre of film throughout the world, probably more than most people realize. Nearly every one of the U.S. critics loved it, of course, and its audience appeal managed to move beyond the crowds of art house patrons or kung fu lovers. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and it won four. All this for a very good reason; it was a truly remarkable, beautiful, dangerous, exhilarating film… to say the very least.
What has this to do with “Curse of the Golden Flower,” one might ask, it has everything to do with it. Before the $128 million success of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” seeing an imported martial arts epic was a feat only managed by traveling to some small indie film theater, or waiting the obligatory five and a half months until it was available in the form of one DVD all but drowned out on the New Release shelf of your local Blockbuster.
Despite the constant introduction of films like “RV” or “Black Christmas” a very strong case can be made for a sort of cinema renaissance happening presently throughout America. One supporting argument for this case is the steady stream of foreign epics that make their way to our local silver screens.
Yimou Zhang is one director whose works have benefited from this movement, “Hero” and “House of Flying Daggers” were two of his films that saw a relatively wide release and received strong praises from critics and fans alike. Once again American audiences have the opportunity to see his beautiful work, and though it may not be his best, it is a worthy entry into the genre, and a great introduction to viewers who may not be familiar with this style of film.
“Curse of the Golden Flower” is more of a soap opera than anything else, though this is not meant as a negative remark. To put it simply, the story, set in the Later Tang Dynasty, follows the royal family of China as they prepare for the “Chrysanthemum Festival” within the walls of the Forbidden City. To call the family dysfunctional is a gross understatement, but I have yet to see a functional family in the movies so this comes as no surprise.
Basically we have an Empress who is being poisoned to madness through the daily medicine that she is forced to take. The Emperor is the person responsible for this poisoning, but he is too busy mourning the loss of his first wife to feel guilty. The first son, The Crown Prince Wan, is having an affair with his stepmother, the Empress, but he is also planning to run away with a palace servant girl, coincidentally the same servant girl who serves the Empress her poisoned medicine daily. There is also the second son, Prince Jai, who is the first son of the Empress, and who will follow his mother in her plot to have revenge upon the Emperor. Lastly there is the youngest prince, Yu, who notices a lot more about everyone else than they notice of him.
When you have this much betrayal and secrecy, all hell is bound to break loose and with Zhang in the directors chair, you know it’s going to happen with style and verve. As with his previous films, Zhang uses color as an essential element in his story telling. He fills the screen to all four corners with combinations and contrasts of tone and hue to set the mood for the characters’ interactions both verbal and physical.
The performances of everyone are terrific, most specifically Gong Li as the Empress who steals every scene, even when paired up against Chow Yun Fat as the Emperor.
The movie as a whole is very impressive. It is a melodrama, to be sure, but besides occasionally drawn out sequences of the obsessively structured lifestyle within the Forbidden City, the movie has nothing going against it. “Curse of the Golden Flower” is admirable entertainment for lovers of action and of drama, and will undoubtedly find a place alongside the other martial arts films American audiences have been fortunate enough to experience.

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