Flowers of Shanghai

Flowers of Shanghai is set in the late nineteenth century, in the British concession of a city divided among foreign powers. There, wealthy Chinese officials are barred from ordinary brothels, so the luxurious establishments known as flower houses serve as their only refuge. These houses run on their own rituals, hierarchies and vocabulary, and the men who frequent them come not only for the courtesans but to dine, smoke opium and gamble. The film follows the intertwined lives of several women working in these houses and the clients attached to them, including a high official whose attentions shift between two women, unsettling the arrangements around them.

Hou Hsiao-hsien directed, working from a screenplay by Chu Tien-wen, with Tony Leung Chiu-wai leading a cast that also includes Michiko Hada, Carina Lau, Michelle Reis, Jack Kao and Rebecca Pan. It was produced by Shozo Ichiyama and Yang Teng-Kuei through the Japanese studio Shochiku together with 3-H Films, and runs 113 minutes. It followed Hou's A City of Sadness and preceded Millennium Mambo, standing between them in the chronological list of the six features credited to him here.

On IMDb, viewers rate the film 7.3 out of 10 from around 4,600 votes, while the smaller TMDB audience gives it 6.9 from just over a hundred votes. A critics' rating of 8.9 from fourteen reviews places it noticeably above both audience figures, suggesting that reviewers responded to it more strongly than general viewers did.