Like all of Zhang Yimou's work, this film supports a wealth of possible meanings. As allegory, we have once again a vision of how innocent victims of an all-powerful patriarchal figure (embodied in the gang boss) attempt to survive under its shadow.

Using a slightly narrower focus, one can find a commentary on contemporary post-Communist China. Some historians see a striking similarity between China's current embrace of gung-ho capitalism and its attendant corruption on the one hand, and the free-wheeling commercialism and lawlessness of pre-revolutionary Shanghai on the other. So perhaps the film is a standard cautionary tale, depicting the perils of China's current condition. In this rather literal-minded reading, Boss Tang and his aging cronies could stand for the progressively more enfeebled Chinese leadership of today, brutally wielding power not out of any ideological fervour, but merely in the pursuit of wealth. (1)

Shanghai Triad can also be seen as another showpiece for Gong Li: crafted this time to display her in a sophisticated, international setting. She wears glamorous clothing -- she sings, she dances -- she's given a charismatic character who makes the journey from an extremely unsympathetic character to someone we end up caring for. It's a great, meaty role, but I'm not sure Gong Li pulls it off, this time. She doesn't seem completely to mesh with the character of Jinbao. I'm reminded of what is lacking in some of her Hong Kong film performances: there is a distance, a slightly uncomfortable fit, which never lets one forget that we're watching China's Most Celebrated Movie Star. And I'm afraid that I would have to agree with nightclub patron "Fatty Yu", who observes of Jinbao's stage performace that "she looks better than she sings".

Unfortunately, the film's text (story, screenplay and characterization) doesn't feel substantial enough to support the burden of all its subtexts, of all the cultural work that it is trying to perform. To Live (1994) hinted at a new problem in Zhang's work: the allegorical "point" of that movie -- that the intervention of the Chinese Communist Party into history meant only disaster for the Chinese -- threatened to overwhelm the particularity of its story.

Zhang's earlier films Red Sorghum (1987), Judou (1989), Raise the Red Lantern (1991) and The Story of Qiu Ju (1992) all pack a tremendous emotional punch. Each of their stories is self-sufficient. The affective investment that each inspires can then animate the other registers of meaning (what Fredric Jameson calls "allegorical transcodings") that each generates. But this process does not work well in reverse. Shanghai Triad relies too heavily on the strength of its extra-textual references to support its otherwise thinly drawn story. (2)

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(1). For more interesting, nuanced explorations of the corrosive results of Dengism's "to get rich is glorious", see Zhou Xiaowen's Ermo (1994), and Huang Jianxin's Signal Left, Turn Right (1996), to name just a couple of recent examples.(back to article)

(2) This issue continues to dog the latest films from the mailand. Zhou Xiaowen's The Emperor's Shadow (1996) is a lavishly drawn, epically scaled history of the tyrannical Qin Emperor Ying Zheng, his dependence on his court musician Gao Jianli, and the latter's refusal to put his own art at the service of imperial power. It is no surprise that this very dilemma should preoccupy a film director still trying to work within the PRC film system. In this case, though, it exerts an almost palpable pressure on the film that manages to smother its vitality.

Just the opposite is true for independent filmmaker Zhang Yuan's stunningly successful Sons (1996), a precisely imagined and rivetingly intense family drama/documentary set in contemporary Beijing. In it, two indolent sons burdened by an alcoholic, abusive, and increasingly loony father finally free themselves from his domination: one son strikes him, and the resulting shock drives Dad meekly into a mental hospital. The apparently true origin of this plot lightens the film's burden of allegorical signification (though it's not all that hard to construct one, in retropect), and frees the story to work entirely on its own terms.

for the rest of the article, refer to the current issue of Cineaction (No. 42, Spring, 1997).