THE FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI
(Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1998)

In our sensational world with its everyday pimps and hos, the reserve of FLOWERS may seem banal, a downer indeed.

But such banality, no - reservation - seems in keeping in a world where prostitutes named "Jade" and "Pearl" must pay off their "aunts" (not pimps) through "bookings" (not paid sex) at "flower houses" (not whorehouses).

Undercover indeed since, like the words, appearances deceive. The flower girls are far from fragile: Jasmine plants casual-seeming remarks about her rival, Emerald plots for freedom, customers are pitted against each other.

The flower girls scheme because they know their world is fragile. The games of chance their rich customers engage in are not theirs to play. When Wang goes berserk he demonstrated how he could have taken Crimson's sheltered life away as easily as he broke a vase. So Hou's camera moves just as a flower girl may turn her head - gracefully, with great consideration of its world and the players. Jade's suicidal outburst seems foolish in light of an elder's advice to keep cool but when it buys her her freedom perhaps this instance of emotion may strike some as surgical in precision.