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Curse of the Golden Flower

(2006)

114 min. Sony Pictures Classics. Director: Zhang Yimou. Cast: Chow Yun-Fat, Gong Li, Liu Ye, Chen Jin, Jay Chou.

Zhang Yimou is back with the latest Chinese competitor in the Opulence Olympics, and not a moment too soon for filmgoers unconvinced that Dreamgirls or Apocalypto will properly carry them away. Curse of the Golden Flower offers more visual dazzle than any film this year, and its delirious melodrama is a certified hoot. Offering splashy, trashy fun in a high-class setting, Curse of the Golden Flower is as overheated as Desperate Housewives, and twice the fun. At least until Teri Hatcher starts doing wire fu.

In fact, the film's domestic disputes originate in the 1934 Cao Yu play Thunderstorm; audaciously, Zhang has transmuted drawing-room drama into palace intrigue, circa the Tang Dynasty. Like Hero and House of Flying Daggers, Curse of the Golden Flower is a martial-arts epic, but Zhang emphasizes pageantry more than ever as the ever-decked-out imperial family anticipates the Chrysanthemum Festival. The director takes advantage of every penny his current clout affords him to craft a grand opera bedecked in 10,000 chrysanthemums and outfitted with hundreds of extras.

After a separation of over a decade, Gong Li returns to her onetime muse and lover Zhang to play Empress to Chow Yun Fat's Emperor. Their sons (Liu Ye, pop star Jay Chou) jockey for love, attention, and rewards, but the family's rift runs much deeper than fraternal rivalry: Dad is poisoning Mom, and Mom is carrying on with her stepson. Though they ostensibly prepare the Chong Yang Festival for the benefit of their subjects, the entirely insular drama betrays their consuming self-interest. Intended as a family celebration of moral pillars (loyalty, filial piety, dignity, righteousness), the festival proves a charade that belies the Emperor's insistence on the propriety of natural law.

Zhang begins the film with women donning finery, men galloping on steeds, and gently falling chrysanthemum petals, and these superficial promises are more than fulfilled by the time an attempted coup breaks out on the flower-strewn palace approach (Hysteria Lane?). The characters are clearly defined, the lavish production design and costumes are nothing less than stunning, and the action, though infrequent, is jaw-dropping and crisply conceived, such as a duel by which a father asserts his prominence and a son demonstrates his worth.

Zhang's plants his ultimate ironic stinger when signs of the final battle are swiftly covered with fresh carpet and flowers. Despite appearances, the message is clear: when something is rotten in the state, no amount of regalia can disguise the stench. You think your family's dysfunctional? Try fighting off the effects of the black fungus or, for that matter, sword-fighting with Dad. With folks dreading their family get-togethers, Curse of the Golden Flower is just the picture for the holidays.

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