Rebecca Pan

Friends turn into lovers and affairs abound when two couples move into a new apartment building around the same time in the 1960s.

Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Michiko Hada, and Michelle Reis, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s gorgeous period reverie is an intoxicating, time-bending experience that traces the romantic intrigue, jealousies, and tensions swirling around four late-nineteenth-century Shanghai “flower houses,” where courtesans live confined to a gilded cage.

Shanghai, a fast-changing metropolis, a port city where people come and go. Eighteen locals, including film director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, ex-soldiers and criminals, recall their lives. Their personal experiences, like eighteen chapters of a novel, tell stories of Shanghai from the 1930s to 2010.