Watch Anytime • Virtual Screening Room: FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI (1998) – NEW 4K RESTORATION

FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI (1998) – NEW 4K RESTORATION
Available to your home theater through the Olympia Film Society
Streaming tickets now available!
An intoxicating, time-bending experience bathed in the golden glow of oil lamps and wreathed in an opium haze, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s gorgeous period reverie traces the romantic intrigue, jealousies, and tensions swirling around a late 19th century Shanghai brothel, where the courtesans live confined to a gilded cage, ensconced in opulent splendor yet forced to work to buy back their freedom. Among the regular clients is the taciturn Master Wang (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), whose relationship with his longtime mistress (Michiko Hada) is roiled by a perceived act of betrayal. Composed in a procession of entrancing long takes, Flowers of Shanghai evokes a vanished world of decadence and cruelty, an insular universe where much of the dramatic action remains tantalizingly offscreen—even as its emotional fallout registers with quiet devastation.
Dir: Hou Hsiao-hsien / 1998 / Taiwan / 113 min

“The seductive power of a drug-induced dream.” — Berenice Reynaud, Chicago Reader

“Contains an artistry, beauty, restraint, and patience that perhaps only Stanley Kubrick, Max Ophuls, or Kenji Mizoguchi possessed.” — Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid