Review of Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) by Emily Z — 21 Jul 2008

It typifies a lot of Chinese movies that I've seen, in that the images are beautiful, it is historically based (I think that this may be the only kind of movie the Chinese government allows, though, I do not know) and that if it was in English, I would probably hate it.

Thankfully though, I haven't seen enough Chinese films for it to get old.

I really enjoyed it though, if not only because of the dark and almost futile story line of female struggles and beautiful cinematography. It's not actually a kung-fu movie, as I was led to believe, though there are a couple sequences in the movie with the stylized fighting, it's only a tool used to tell the story.

This is one of those movies you will appreciate more if you watch the 'making of' feature.

And my god, Gong Li is beautiful.