‘Flowers of Shanghai’: Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Masterpiece Gets A 4K Restoration Trailer

Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien is arguably one of the greatest filmmakers in the world (he was voted “Director of the Decade” for the 1990s in a poll of American and international critics by The Village Voice and Film Comment). But his output of late has been so incredibly slow and sparse; it’s arguably put a damper on his global acclaim outside the world of cinephiles. While he received arguably his highest mark of international acclaim when he won the Best Director prize in Cannes for “The Assassin” in 2015, the film before that “Flight of the Red Balloon” (2007) was eight years prior. While there’s a new film in the works, it’s going on six years now, and who knows when it will show up.

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I digress, and while we wait for Hsiao-hsien to appear again, at least one of his early masterpieces is getting a restoration and re-release treatment. Released in 1989 and starring Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, Michiko Hada, and Michelle Reis, the film is set in the “flower houses” (aka upscale brothels) of Shanghai feature various interweaving stories of love, loyalty, and deceit which play out subtly and sublimely.

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A Janus Films release, the film will hit New York at Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema today, Friday, November 20. The film was restored in 4K, in 2019 from the 35mm original negative by Shochiku in collaboration with the Shanghai International Film Festival at the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory. Janus has a collaborative relationship with the Criterion Collection, so it’s very likely we see this release on Blu-Ray/DVD via Criterion in 2021.

READ MORE: Watch: Breathtaking New Full-Length Trailer For Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s ‘The Assassin’

Hsien is also known for “A City of Sadness” (1989), which he won the Golden Lion award for in Venice “Millennium Mambo” (2001), “Three Times” (2005). The films are slow and hypnotic, but almost always ravishing in their detail and suppleness. Here’s the official synopsis:

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An intoxicating, time-bending experience bathed in the golden glow of oil lamps and wreathed in an opium haze, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s gorgeous period reverie traces the romantic intrigue, jealousies, and tensions swirling around a late 19th century Shanghai brothel, where the courtesans live confined to a gilded cage, ensconced in opulent splendor yet forced to work to buy back their freedom. Among the regular clients is the taciturn Master Wang (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), whose relationship with his longtime mistress (Michiko Hada) is roiled by a perceived act of betrayal. Composed in a procession of entrancing long takes, Flowers of Shanghai evokes a vanished world of decadence and cruelty, an insular universe where much of the dramatic action remains tantalizingly offscreen-even as its emotional fallout registers with quiet devastation.

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Watch the full trailer for the 4K restoration of “Flowers of Shanghai” below.