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Asian cinema: Hong Kong film
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Why Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s best wuxia films are Shadow and Curse of the Golden Flower

  • Gong Li, Chow Yun-fat and Jay Chou star in Curse of the Golden Flower – more of a palace drama than a wuxia film but with prominent martial arts action scenes
  • The more recent Shadow combines a well-planned storyline with impressive martial arts scenes that reflect the traditions of the genre

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Chow Yun-fat in a still from Curse of the Golden Flower, Zhang Yimou’s 2006 film and one of his best wuxia movies.
Richard James Havis

Hero and House of Flying Daggers are Zhang Yimou’s most famous wuxia films, but they are not his best. The Chinese filmmaker’s greatest accomplishments in the wuxia genre lie elsewhere.

Curse of the Golden Flower (2006)

Zhang’s first two wuxia films, Hero and House of Flying Daggers were criticised in mainland China for being superficial, so he decided to make 2006’s Curse of the Golden Flower heavy on plot.

The film’s storyline is based on Cao Yu’s classic 1934 play Thunderstorm, which tells of the demise of a powerful family through incest, personal tyranny and corruption in the 1930s. Zhang decided to transpose the story to the late Tang dynasty (923AD to 937AD), a time of opulence and wealth in China – and one framed by corruption and decay after the dynasty’s stable early period.

The film differs from Zhang’s earlier two “action” films, and the later Shadow, in that it is as much a palace drama and a war film as it is a wuxia film.
Still, the martial arts scenes, directed by Hong Kong master Tony Ching Siu-tung, are pushed to the fore, and the action – more fantastical than realistic – is seamlessly integrated with the drama.
Gong Li stars as Empress Phoenix, whose husband, Emperor Ping (Chow Yun-fat), is poisoning her. The empress is having an affair with her stepson, and has planned an insurrection led by her son Prince Jai (Jay Chou), setting the scene for deception, disaster and doom.
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