Curse of the Golden Flower (2006)

Brief: Empress Phoenix (Gong Li) discovers that her husband, Emperor Ping (Chow Yun-Fat), has been slowly poisoning her. As the Chrysanthemum Festival approaches, the family (Jay Chou, Ye Liu, and Junjie Qin) gathers, and the Empress plots to remove her husband from the throne.

The credits informed me that the events in the movie were a conflation of real events, as well as some fiction. I don't know the fact from fiction, so I hope it doesn't matter too much in relation to what I have to say.

At first, I was really into this movie. It's stunning to look at, Li is a terrific actress when she's not speaking English phonetically, and I'm digging the whole palace intrigue thing. Plus, Yun-Fat's character is inscrutable in a way that's fun to watch, and Chou is super cute. Did I mention that it looks great?

Unfortunately - and this is the movie's great failing - the whole palace intrigue thing goes on for far too long. I wanted to see some fighting, but I was enjoying watching Li plot and trying to figure out what secrets would come out next. At a certain point, I stopped caring. The twists were so over the top that they became laughable. The lengthy reaction shots were borderline insufferable. When were we going to get to something good? You know, like well choreographed fighting?

When we finally did, it was superb to watch. The court intrigue finally came to a head, so people started dying! Hurrah!

And then, suddenly, the fighting is over, and the movie goes right back to making no sense. Oh, writer-director Yimou Zhang, you're not going to give this guy any motives whatsoever? Was I supposed to figure those when his flowing locks brilliantly un-spooled in the fight? No? I don't get to know? Okay, cool. Oh, and that's how it's going to end? Um, that's not really an ending. If anything, it raises more problems than we had when we started. Alright, then. Well, can Li at least have a fight scene of her own? I have a feeling she could kick totally ass. No? She just gets to wear a lot of gold. Sigh.

On one hand, I'm still not sure what the title or the ending meant. The plot came a bit unravelled. On the other hand, it's such a sumptuous journey for the eye that it's difficult to avoid being taken in. On the whole, it's not a bad way to spend an afternoon. B