Eye Wide Opened for Curse of the Golden Flower

Days ago, I asked one of my friends to recommend a movie to watch over Live Messenger and her immediate response was Curse of the Golden Flower and have myself a “boobs treat”. Well, I have forgotten the exact phrase but it was something to that extend. Last weekend, I suggested this movie to my buddy TK and after I made the booking, he suggested to meet half an hour earlier than usual. I asked why and his reply was: we don’t want to miss Gong Li’s boobs, do we? Gasp! I was actually intrigued by the storyline as it seems to contain the trademarks of Chinese movies. When I told that to Cynthia while she was wearing a cosmetic mask, she tried very hard not to laugh (and she did burst out laughing). I know, you readers are probably laughing in disbelief too but I wanted to watch this movies because of the storyline and not the … erm … boobs.

I immediately understood people’s reaction to the movie at the opening scene. Imagine yourself in one of the biggest Cathay theaters with a huge screen and all you see is a sea of palace maids bearing almost half of their boobs. Have I seen that many boobs in my life before? Probably not.

Boobs aside, this movie has it highs and lows. The setting is extravagant and the entire movie is so colourful, especially the colour gold. Be it as hundreds of actors on the screen or just a few of them serving tea or following the royal family, all the actions were sychronised. Not a sense of disorder. You can easily sit back, enjoy this majestic movie, and walk out of the theater feeling satisfied by this 45 million dollars production – most expensive Chinese film to date.

But I can’t. The plot is too simplistic and at times, flawed. I wish I have read the synopsis carefully and some of the Chinese write-ups from the Internet before watching this movie. That way, at least I wouldn’t feel that confused. Perhaps it is because I relied on the subtitles to understand the movie and the white subtitles set against a background that was mostly gold in colour just didn’t work out for me.

Gong Li and Chow Yun Fat’s acting was great. They played out their characters well. It was Jay Chow’s acting that is in question. A few scene, Jay Chow has to act side by side with Gong Li and it was most obvious that he just didn’t cut it at all. I sense that the cameraman tried very hard to minimise his exposure and in the theater, the audience laughed whenever Jay Chow acted those emotional dramatic scenes. His battle scene was watchable but that is not exactly acting, is it?

The historical inaccuracies may not go well with some of you though I can easily look pass that. Perhaps my imagination tends to go wild. At one point, when I watched Prince Jai (Jay Chow) in full silver armor practicing sword with the Emperor (Chow Yun Fat) in golden armor, I swear I felt like watching a sci-fi movie.