Flowers of Shanghai

Flowers of Shanghai is a 1998 film, made in Taiwan, directed by Guangdong-born Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien starring Hada Michiko, Annie Shizuka Inoh, Shuan Fang, Jack Kao, Carina Lau, Tony Leung, Rebecca Pan, Michelle Reis and Vicky Wei. It was voted the third best film of the 1990s in the 1999 Village Voice Film Poll. In four elegant brothels, called "Flower Houses", in fin-de-siècle 19th-century Shanghai , several affairs are described. The action involves four drunkards, and takes place mostly in candlelight. Preparation and consumption of opium and tea are at the center of... the business operations. Subtitles note that the girl Crimson is in Huifang, Pearl is in Gongyang, Emerald is in Shangren, and Jasmine is in East Hexing. The relations of the rich gentlemen with the courtesans is partly monogamous and is held to an obligation of many years. The life of the graceful, well-bred girls, who were young when bought, resembles in certain respects a life of slavery. Because of the oppressing social conventions, they dream to pay off their debts, or to marry into the freedom and higher conditions.
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