Review of Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) by Chads. — 15 Mar 2007

At the outset, "Curse of the Golden Flower" will remind some of a slightly more-involving "Marie Antoinette" with its repetitive scenes of court life. When Empress Phoenix(Gong Li) isn't drinking her medicine, she's sewing chrysanthemums for the festival.

Otherwise, she's "Spanking the [Chinese] Monkey" with her stepson. Lucky for us, however, a crayon box barfed. You don't watch "Curse of the Golden Flower", you gawk; it contains the most attention-grabbing art direction since Vincent Ward's "What Dreams May Come".

A lot of the interiors are so feverishly ornate, even clevage, jiggling clevage, mind you, competes for your undivided attention. Unlike Zhang Yimou's "Hero" and "House of the Flying Daggers", the action here is largely back-ended.

If the first two installments of Yimou's martial arts trilogy are popcorn flicks, "Curse of the Golden Flower" is more in line with his early-period works that made him a darling on the film-festival circuit.

Although the operatic-like family dysfunctionalism comes perilously close to melodramatic camp, the ravish decor of this hallucigenic vision of early-China manages to normalize the larger-than-life emotions.