Vicky (Qi Shu) is constantly at odds with her boyfriend Hao-Hao (Chun-hao Tuan) and always breaking up with him. She finds herself using mysterious Jack (Jack Kao) with a shady past, as an anchor in her turbulent life. Like all of Hsiao-hsien Hou films this one too looks at human emotion and passion with dispassionate lenses.
The film opens at a dinner table with drunken men playing drinking games and waited upon by stunning women. There is a still impassive face in that crowd. A face that over powers every scene. Coming across a Hsiao-hsien Hou flick featuring Tony Leung, I was predictably drawn to it. The flowers in the movie are obviously not him but the courtesans who live in the expansive brothels of Shanghai in the 1880s. The women scheme to buy their freedom and love using "feelings" as a currency. A well shot period drama.
A gritty gangster flick directed by Hsiao-hsien Hou shows Kao (Jack Kao), a small time crook in Taipei who wants to go legal. He hopes to invests in a restaurant and settle down. But his partner in crime, Flatty (Giong Lim) won't let him. Flatty's girl, Pretzel (Annie Shizuka Inoh) only adds to the dead weight that drags Kao down.
A movie within a movie with the past and present of actress Liang Ching (Annie Shizuka Inoh) juxtaposing the role she is playing in the "within" movie. Liang in the movie plays Chiang Bi-Yu, an anti-Japanese revolutionary in the 1940s. While doing this role she finds her past crowding into her present as the tendrils of her dead boyfriend creeps back into her life. Aimed at drawing attention to the anti-Japanese movement in Taiwan the film meanders and the three threads barely hold together.
