The films of Hou Hsiao-Hsien are generally centered on the collision and convergence of
multiple historical forces reshaping the “present” in their image, where a step forward into the
future is countered by scattershot movements toward shattered pasts. Even in a “linear”
narrative like The Time to Live and The Time to Die (1985), his characters (and the film itself)
only languidly lurch into the future, unable to process the events that have already moved past
them. His filmmaking is intrinsically tied to the contradictions of the Taiwanese identity, an
identity molded by disparate colonial forces — China, Japan, and, in its outsize influence rather
than direct occupation, the U.S. — even as Taiwan attempts to establish a unique identity from
the historical rubble. Like his contemporary Edward Yang, breakdowns, stasis, and
introspections form a significant part of his modus operandi, even though they manifest in a
different form than Yang’s. A superficial reason could be attributed to the more contemporary,
urban settings of Yang and the more rural, period settings of Hou, but in both their films,
paralysis stems from contending with history, be it in the seeming ahistoricism of Yang’s films
where characters haplessly scrounge for the grand narrative of the future by neglecting their
past, or in Hou’s films where the characters are trapped by a nostalgia for a lost past even as
events rapidly alter their futures. Appending Hou’s films with the “period” tag is nothing but a
misnomer, especially when his country is steeped in an overpowering temporal dissonance.

Flowers of Shanghai (1998) appears to be an outlier in his ’90s work, particularly when looked
at through this lens. As the title indicates, the film is not set in Taiwan but in the “Flower
Houses” of Shanghai, which are among the only British-free refuges for the decadent Chinese
elite. Hou’s filmmaking embodies the ethos of this hermetically sealed space, confining all the
action (or the lack of it) only within the walls of this domicile. The only “history” emerging
from this film is the rigorous chronicling of the flower-house operations and a meticulous
attention to period detail, but the tremors of the present and the leaps into the future, major
factors that throttle the constructed past in Hou’s earlier films, are seemingly absent. What we
have instead are sumptuous, languorous long takes that lure the viewer into these seductive,
opium-addled spaces, almost beckoning us to immerse ourselves in the escapist stupor of the
patrons. While interacting with the critic Jonathan Rosenbaum in 1998, Hou mentioned that he
wanted to focus more on the present as films dealing with the past invite nostalgia. Did he have
this film in mind when he said this?

There’s no doubt that Flowers of Shanghai has its fair share of period fetishism. Using
primarily the lighting of spirit lamps, Hou ravishingly recreates the atmosphere through his
interior design and intricate costuming combined with slow, sensuous camera movements.
Food, in particular, induces a sensorial pleasure in this insular world, and never has the ritual
associated with eating been filmed with such salivating succulence. But even though Hou
imbibes the rhythms of the place, he doesn’t luxuriate in his images. After delicately conjuring
an atmosphere of indulgence, Hou dispenses with the flower-houses’ raison d’etre — sex. The
peripheral — negotiations, power dynamics, and propriety — instead become the central, even
when the scenes are devoted to the raucous ramblings and drinking games of the patrons at the
dinner table. Hou brings into sharp focus what evades the grasp of several lesser filmmakers.
The outpouring of voluptuous passions is very much undergirded by the material, especially in
a house where an essential human interaction is affected by a transaction.

Flowers of Shanghai revolves around the actions of five courtesans and their patrons, with the
large dinner table in the flower house serving as the connective tissue for all their respective
rooms. At the dinner table, Hou’s camera slowly pushes the patrons in and out of the frame,
sometimes even rendering them as disembodied voices. The expressions of a certain Master
Wang, played by the master of the lugubrious pout, Tony Leung, are of particular interest, as
he zones in and out of the proceedings. Rejected in marriage by the courtesan Crimson
(Michiko Hada), Wang slowly gravitates to the younger courtesan, Jasmine (Vicky Wei),
upsetting the monetary needs of Crimson. Another courtesan, Emerald (Michelle Reis), is
working on buying her freedom to move out of the flower house, while Pearl (Carina Lau)
consolidates her position in her enclave and mentors the younger recruits.

The courtesans might hold sway in their own spaces, but the patrons bring in the allures of the
outside world. Hou’s camera, while maintaining its distance, shuttles between these alternating
power points from the secluded interiors to the liminal space connecting the interiors to the
dining room. The interiors are fragmented by sliding doors and slits, with the incandescent
spirit lamps emerging as the focal point of the rooms. The desires of the impatient patrons,
particularly the dazed Master Wang, are thwarted by the courtesan’s allusions to their material
reality. The concerns of the outside world are reflected, much to the frustrations of the patrons,
in the courtesans’ negotiations, with each character gently jostling for the attention of the
camera. But this being a house of pleasure, the patrons have to be placated by other sensorial
baits such as food and opium, and Hou’s slow camera movements duly settle on the spirit lamps
during the pregnant pauses in their conversations.

As much as this tussle between the central (sex) and peripheral is fascinating, Flowers of
Shanghai appears as an auteurist oddity because it seemingly hews too closely to the rhythms
and workings of the flower-house — Hou’s version of Lizzie Borden’s Working Girls (1985), as
Willow Catelyn Maclay pointed out. The images still lend themselves to a certain kind of
nostalgia, even if critiqued, as the zooming out to include the present and its ruptures into the
past (and vice versa), a defining characteristic of Hou’s earlier films, is seemingly absent. This
would be the case if we only consider Hou’s long takes and neglect the interstices, the vast void
encompassed by the fade-outs (dis)connecting the long takes. The sexual act between the
negotiations seemingly passes into this oblivion, with each fade-out weighted to the gesture of
lighting and putting off the flame from the lamps. The void, though, contains so much more.
The critic Shigehiko Hasumi, in his seminal Directed by Yasujiro Ozu, boils down the entire
cinematographic arsenal to three kinds of shots: the traveling shot, the pan or tilt, and the
static shot. Countering claims about Ozu that look at his filmography through the lens of a Zen-
like negation, Hasumi argues persuasively about Ozu exposing the limits of cinema by
embracing the constraints of the medium, such as the limitations in the kind of shots and
cinema’s failures to depict elements such as wind and “the act of looking.” Hou, who has been
frequently compared to Ozu, does something similar through his use of fade-outs. Though
different kinds of edits exist, they can all be categorized as either cuts or transitions. Hou blurs
the boundary between the fade-out and the dissolve, with the void being as much an image as
the second image in a dissolve. The void in Flowers of Shanghai contains both the
unrepresentable and the repressed, the outside world which Wang detaches from and the
oppression endured by the courtesans, the colonial emasculation of the Chinese men, and the
forgotten histories of their women.

Though the film was initially intended to include outdoor sequences, Hou uses his limitation
to meditate on fade-outs and negative space. And while history and the present are not directly
addressed, it doesn’t mean that there are no ruptures. At roughly the two-thirds mark of the film, Wang is told
to wait in Crimson’s room until she arrives. Hou unrolls a fade-out as per cue, only to jolt us
with a POV shot, the first in the entire film. The aesthetic rigor of distanced long takes has
suddenly been disrupted, as Wang realizes that Crimson is with another man. The simple
material fact of courtesans having, even necessitating, multiple clients has been conveniently
forgotten by Wang, and his thwarted desire forces him to peer into the void. Confronting reality,
even though it is merely the material reality of the flower house, shatters the illusions of the
hitherto subdued Wang, who, in a fit of rage, breaks all the porcelain in Crimson’s room. The
outside world and its politics have always existed as structuring absences, mediating the desires
of the courtesans, who (most of them) want to run toward it, and the patrons, who want to run
away from it while dangling its existence in front of the courtesans as bait. Hou, unlike his
characters, is not afraid to gaze into the abyss. He knows that the fade-out doesn’t just contain
the repressed and external world of the filmic reality. It is a limit of cinema itself, a portal to
“our” world and beyond.

Comments are closed.