letterboxd review:
shouldn’t surprise anyone that when it comes to china, an obscure film that doesn’t even have a single rating on imdb could reveal itself as one of the most important pieces of their film history lol

the abudant shots of legs and feet to establish location and status are very hong kong, but that specific fluidity the cameras has traversing intimate space is uniquely china again. even on a watermarked, low quality chinese (i think bootleg) streaming salvage of a copy you can’t mistake the liveliness of this era.

the most impressive part, directly coming off that, is the crazy sense of scale this film manages to translate through it’s relatively modest presentation. it’s a 2000’s chinese indie like all the ones i’ve seen before it are, yet it’s the first one that’s managed to actually humble me by conveying the sheer .. what word to use? the vastness of what china is. a kingdom going back forever, with so many people, cultures, languages, and ideas throughout that it may as well be its own world.

that it was its own world, ironically culminating in its own downfall precisely because they didn’t think it was possible.

one of the films periods is set during that downfall, the british who were once considered friends, storming in to steal relics and culture for their own gain. the one before, of an emperor willing to kill an entire village if two vases aren’t made exactly how he wants them. and the third, current day 2005, the majority of the film. rich art collector got euros and pounds alongside his yen, and chinese culture is still kinda just in limbo somewhere as individuals like him seek to restore parts of it for themselves. auction held in hong kong of course.

things can be robbed away, but the chinese spirit will remain

China Flower (hold on.. that quote placement is not an anti hong kong statement btw, the opposite)

China Flower represents the push and pull over chinese culture that has led to the kingdoms tragic downfall, and (ongoing) new rise. it’s every bit the conundrum it sounds, because for as negatively as the outside forces are depicted, invading china to deprive them of their cultural treasures, you can view the internal ones just the same. one comes in and takes what you created under the pretense of appreciation, while the other doesn’t even let you create in the first place anymore.. redefining what is to be appreciated, and fighting a war on anything that deviates or questions.

few films are this loaded, and even fewer channel it into something so subtle. looking at the face value politics of this film you’d expect it to he hailed as classic in china, a stylish film celebrating chinese art while condemning britains evils, all without being even a touch of overbearing thanks to the largely contemporary setting. but if that was the case id at least expect a decent copy to be available, not to mention for literally anyone in the west to have talked about it.

it could still be that it is in fact popular there and they’re just keeping it from us.. would be sorta fitting lol, but then again, it may just be that someone else picked up on the duality of this damning criticism as well, and did their job to contain it.

carman lee’s performance leaves me stumped, because unlike the greatness a word like ‘speechless’ implies, i was actually left legitimately speechless over this one. i literally don’t know what my own thoughts are, like a kid seeing a magic trick they cant explain. could be trivial sleight of hand, could have actually been supernatural forces at play.

China.Flower.2005.SD.SUBBED.VQQ.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.h264-Peep.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 29mn
Size:	317 MiB
Video
Codec:	h264
Resolution:	560x352
Aspect ratio:	16:10
Frame rate:	25.000 fps
Bit rate:	447 kb/s
Audio
Chinese 2.0ch AAC LC SBR @ 48.0 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/AEC54199465A864/China.Flower.2005.SD.SUBBED.VQQ.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.h264-Peep.mkv

Language(s):Chinese
Subtitles:English

The post Hua Sang – China Flower (2005) first appeared on Cinema of the World.