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PLOT: The setting is China's 10th century Tang Dynasy. The story, constructed like a Shakespearean tragedy, chronicles deceit and death in the emperor's palace.
In the new Chinese film Curse Of The Golden Flower, master filmmaker Zhang Yimou returns to the dual martial-arts/historical-epic genre again, following Hero and House Of Flying Daggers.
But his "wuxia" magic is wearing thin, despite staggering if lurid visuals and the superstar pairing of Gong Li and Chow Yun-Fat as the emperor and his second wife.
Hero was absolutely dazzling, if politically troubling for its emphasis on the collective good over individual rights. The hero of the title had to self-sacrifice.
House Of Flying Daggers was just as dazzling, and took an opposite socio-political tack by emphasizing the value of the individual in a time of moral complexity.
Curse Of The Golden Flower, set in AD 928 and is based on a 1930s Chinese play by Cao Yu, is just as beautiful as the first two films. But its content is scrambled, like a serving of green eggs and ham.
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It opens in theatres today.
The message of Curse Of The Golden Flower, if there is one, is as confused and incoherent as the storytelling. And the fight scenes are long overdue, after banal dialogue and overwrought melodrama.
The trouble starts right off the top, as the emperor (Chow Yun-Fat, the Hong Kong killer cop who once definied cinematic cool) returns to the palace. He soons reveals himself as a moody, heartless bastard more concerned with maintaining power than using it wisely.
Coincidentally, the emperor's second son (Jay Chou as Prince Jai) returns after three years of military service in the hinterland.
He misses his mommy (Gong Li).
The prince discovers that she is deathly ill. We soon learn that she is being poisoned by the emperor, in part because he knows she is having an affair with his cowardly eldest son, Crown Prince Wan (Liu Ye). This is not incest: He is the son of the emperor's first wife. But it is creepy, especially because he is in love with someone else.
More intrigue propels forward all the players, including another prince (Qin Junjie) and a my sterious doctor's wife (Chen Ji), toward a climactic battle sequence in which almost everyone dies in spectacular fashion.
There are more double-crosses than in Hamlet. The Shakespearean allusion is no accident. Other tragedies, from Macbeth to King Lear, are also referenced. It turns out, however, it is Much Ado About Nothing.
None of the characters inspires a viewer to place either trust or sympathy in him or her. Frankly, we don't give a damn who lives and who dies. Even the "how" takes too long to reveal, even though Curse is a compact film.
So the third in Zhang's trilogy of wuxia films is the weakest, as if he ran out of things to say beyond splashing the colour and assembling armies of digitalized soldiers.
BOTTOM LINE: All surface beauty, no substance. Zhang Yimou is a master but this film lacks storytelling prowess. And he wastes his former lover, Gong Li, in a role that has two desperate notes to play, not a symphony.
(This film is rated 14A)