Flowers of Shanghai

In one of his most quietly devastating performances, Tony Leung stars as Master Wang, a wealthy patron drifting through the opium-laden “flower houses” of fin-de-siècle 19th-century Shanghai. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s ravishing chamber drama follows the intertwined intrigues of four courtesans in a hermetically sealed world that seems to float outside of time. Torn between the demanding Crimson (Michiko Hada) and the more eager-to-please Jasmin (Vicky Wei), Wang gradually realizes he is looking for love in all the wrong places. Hou’s first film set outside of Taiwan, Flowers of Shanghai is a transfixing masterwork—an achingly, intoxicatingly sensuous touchstone and a pivotal chapter in Leung’s career that placed his famously modern melancholia inside an exquisite late-Qing tableau. An NYFF36 Main Slate selection and NYFF58 Revivals selection.