Curse of the Golden Flower: Style Over Substance

2006 opened with the opulent but soulless The Promise by vaunted Chinese Fifth Generation director Chen Kaige, and now closes with the equally confounding Curse of the Golden Flower by Chen contemporary Zhang Yimou. No other Asian release arrives with greater anticipation or talent this year, especially due to the potent combination of writer/director Zhang and his original muse, superstar actress Gong Li, reteaming for the first time in over a decade.

Zhang retooled the framework of stylized historical epics with the colorful, action-packed Hero, which benefited from a reasonably strong story in spite of its Rashomon-like structure. He followed up with the less cohesive but equally vibrant House of Flying Daggers, then retreated from those large-scale efforts to return to his roots with the small, simple, and satisfying Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, proving that he hadn't abandoned his small-time beginnings after a taste of big-budget spectacle. Zhang clearly still knows how to spin a powerful tale, so it's all the more distressing that the story is given such short shrift in his new film.

Gong Li plays the icy wife to the equally cold and calculating emperor (Chow Yun-Fat) as they raise their three sons in their luxurious, unbelievably ostentatious palace. There's clearly no love lost between the two, although there's plenty of illicit love between Gong and her stepson, the crown prince. The prince is also getting some action on the side from a palace worker, who happens to be the daughter of the chief palace doctor, who happens to be married to a woman with a mysterious past that disrupts the entire balance of power when revealed. Got all that? There's more, and the twisted relationships of the royals and their subjects add plenty of head-scratching to the proceedings as viewers try to keep everything straight. It's family drama on a grand scale, so fans hoping for a higher volume of action set-pieces like Hero are bound to be bitterly disappointed.