Zhang Yimou's latest epic depicts an imperial power struggle shrouded in a thick cloud of morbidly incandescent colours. It leaves you dizzy with bewilderment. You'll either love it or hate it. There's no way you can walk out of the theatre with indifference.

"Curse of the Golden Flower" (aka "Mancheng jindai huangjinjia") is not for the feeble minded or the colour blind. Like all big-budget movies that mark the end-of-year holiday season in China, this visually outrageous pageantry is set in ancient times when power was not transferred smoothly from one generation to the next, especially among the royal family.

Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li play the emperor and the empress who are not exactly the Chinese equivalents of Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn in "On Golden Pond."

The first half of the movie is entangled in expository quagmire and shows the emperor slowly poisoning her majesty's health through a strategically prescribed herb ingredient. The plot thickens when the eldest prince (Jay Chao) tries to disentangle his amorous ties with the empress, who is his stepmother. The prince is caught out when his affection wanders to the daughter of the royal doctor.

For those who are familiar with Cao Yu's classic play "Thunderstorm," from which the movie is adapted, the twists and turns in narration do not come as a surprise.

The melodramatic storyline has obvious roots in Shakespearean tragedies, such as the three siblings from "King Lear" and the pile-up of dead bodies in "Hamlet." Still, the suspenseful ending, which somewhat veers from the original story, is delivered with force and flourish.

For lovers of martial arts flicks, the wait is long and not necessarily worthwhile because this is basically "Raise the Red Lantern" raised to umpteenth degree of opulence and the not jaw-dropping action of "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon."

Gong Li puts Joan Crawford to shame by giving a scene-stealing performance as the long-suffering, conniving wife, whose sexual frustration simmers.

She is the anchor of this star-studded cast of well-delineated characters. Like Zhang Ziyi's character in "The Banquet," a role written for Gong in the first place, the Lady Macbeth-like heroine has to exude layers of inner worlds. Vengeance and lust for power are the most prominent and Gong Li reveals these traits in abundance.

Taiwanese rapper Jay Chou is given a chance to show off his acting chops. In at least two scenes, in which his character is moved by his stepmother's fate and decides to turn against his father, he proves he still has a future beyond being a teen idol.

The other actors, including Chow Yun Fat, turn in competent but not brilliant performances.

The real star of this show is Zhang Yimou's colour scheme rather than the flesh-and-blood human beings.

Instead of half a dozen palettes for his previous "Hero," one for each scene, Zhang has concocted a visual style that dangerously straddles the gorgeous and the gory.

The golden hues are so pervasive and saturated that they tend to smother any human subtleties as if they were the white powders caked on faces of French aristocrats living in opulent palaces.

The repeated walking through palace corridors, where exposition is given to temporary reflections on what's engulfing these Chinese royals, may symbolize the misery of these hapless people. The royals may be powerful, but they are prisoners of a gilded cage, slaves of a political system for which absolute power means the right to kill your own family members.

In terms of show-stopping grandiose, it is a throwback to the diva tradition, such as Norma Desmond's descent on her grand staircase in "Sunset Boulevard," where nothing is said but a lot is implied.

Technically, the "Curse" has a hard time climbing out of the shadow of "The Lord of the Rings." All the computer-generated-image armies and weaponry are a bit too obvious to be believable.

However, they do serve a purpose: In a power struggle of imperial proportion, everybody else is reduced to the status of ants, which is exactly the value of human life in such an environment.

Accentuated with surround sound, the marching of these armies made me shudder, but for all the wrong reasons.

I fear the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics, of which Zhang is the principal helmsmen, may march to same martial tune.

The important thing is: Is Zhang Yimou extolling, as many believe he did in "Hero," or is he implicitly critical of it?

That may determine whether this swirl of swindle and swordplay with a sea of chrysanthemums in the backdrop turns out to be a soap opera with a grand budget or a grand opera with a disturbing political message.

The "Curse of the Golden Flower" opened nationwide yesterday.

(China Daily 12/15/2006 page13)