Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige were the two dominant figures of the so-called Chinese Fifth Generation of film-makers who revitalised the nation's cinema following the Cultural Revolution. Both made several masterworks in the late Eighties and early Nineties, but have made little of interest recently.
Zhang, who's preparing to stage the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, has devoted most of this century to three spectacular period movies, Hero, House of Flying Daggers and now Curse of the Golden Flower. The most expensive Chinese movie to date, it has a cast of thousands and more shoes and costumes than Imelda Marcos could dream of. The time is the tenth century AD, the Tang dynasty is on its last, decadent legs and scheming worthy of the Borgias is going on in the imperial palace.
The emperor (Chow Yun Fat) is slowly poisoning the empress (Gong Li). The empress is having an affair with her disinherited stepson, who is about to elope with the imperial physician's daughter. The emperor's other sons are involved in coups and putsches and everyone is up to their necks in hieratic kow-towing, surrounded by ostentation worthy of the Carrington and Colby dynasties.
Big things are planned for the Festival of Chrysanthemums, the favourite flower of the empress (hence her nickname, Queen Mum), and mum's literally the word for the floral effusion and figuratively for the plotting going on everywhere. The mostly tedious rituals of palace life carry over into the endless, elaborately choreographed battles in which opulent armies clash by night, dressed in gold to match the chrysanthemums, or in black.
There are splendid moments in which masked swordsmen abseil down cliffs and palace walls. But just as there is little in the way of life to be found in the palace, there is nothing of the brutal messiness of warfare in the combat sequences. Zhang's wonderful way with colour was a significant part of the drama in such exquisite pictures as Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern. Here, it is at the service of hollow spectacle.
