Bijou Beauty: Gong LiThe real violence is emotional in 'Shanghai Triad'
By Richard von Busack
"You need more than luck in Shanghai," said Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) in The Lady From Shanghai. Zhang Yimou's new film, Shanghai Triad, is a tale of gangster life in which the violence is mostly emotional, and the ultimate triumph of evil is so complete and unmitigated that it's positively bracing. Gong Li is exceptionally good as Bijou, a red-lipped, spoiled-rotten, trashy moll, whose redemption precedes her destruction.
Shanghai Triad is set in China in the 1930s. Shuisheng (Wang Xiao Xiao), a young boy from the country, is apprenticed to a crime boss' mistress. The action takes place over the course of a week, divided by a change of scenery from the mobster's mansion and club (each big enough for its own ZIP code) to his hideout on a nearly uninhabited island. While on the island, Shuisheng befriends the daughter of an island basket weaver, to whom Bijou is also drawn for maternal reasons. This country mouse/city rat contrast slows the picture until the surprisingly violence-free payoff. Gong Li's teasingly blasé heroine is a classic movie part reinterpreted. It's not a breakthrough conception of womanhood, but who in modern American movies could play this part so purely and forcefully? You have to look back to Bette Davis.
Yimou's hallmark is an old-fashioned integrity combined with modern technical mastery. He doesn't use the graphic violence that's associated with anything to do with gangsters--except in a scene of Shuisheng discovering the aftermath of a gang fight--nor does he try to sweeten the story, to find a note of grace for the ending.
If my enthusiasm for Shanghai Triad is a little reserved, it's just because of the old-fashionedness, a certain lack of tension in the rural scenes that compounds the romanticizing of country life. Yimou is often infatuated with his own compositions (though they are certainly worth falling for, executed in the gorgeous color photography that's been a mark of his work in Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern). By rediscovering the old symbols (rose petals being crushed for hopeless love), dire fates and big emotions of the silent movies and their tragic heroines, Yimou's style can be described as so old it's brand-new.
Shanghai Triad (R; 109 min.), directed by Zhang Yimou, written by Bi Feiyu, photographed by Lu Yue and starring Gong Li.
