FLOWERS OF PASSION
A film review by William Tsun-Yuk Hsu
Copyright 1988 William Tsun-Yuk Hsu
After complaining for months that it's impossible to find Shuji Terayama's films on video, by chance a friend spotted Klaus Kinski on the box of FLOWERS OF PASSION and called my attention to it. (If anyone has information on the availability of Terayama's other films, I would love to hear from him.)
FLOWERS OF PASSION is based on a story by Pauline Reage (who wrote THE STORY OF O). It is set in a mythical Robbe-Grillet-esque Hong Kong in the 1920's. In fact the atmosphere and imagery in FLOWERS OF PASSION is very similar to some of Robbe-Grillet's later novels, for example LA MAISON DE RENDEZVOUS, with its surreal events, dream-like images, and themes of mental and sexual bondage. FLOWERS OF PASSION is (appropriately?) produced by the producer for Oshima's Bataille-esque IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES, and Peter, the female impersonator who appears in many Kurosawa films, plays the madam of a brothel.
FLOWERS OF PASSION is beautifully photographed, and has many unforgettable images (the elaborate toys in the brothel, "O" tied to a bed perching precariously on a sloping roof with a bird on her torso, a prostitute drowns herself in a river, and a piano floats up from the bottom of the river to prop up her body). There are many well-constructed scenes and lighting effects. However, Terayama seems to have little to say beyond the cliches of French decadent sexual philosophy (think of Bataille or de Sade; the film opens with a Baudelaire quote). He comes very close to capturing the atmosphere of books like Robbe-Grillet's LA MAISON DE RENDEZVOUS, but without explicitly challenging the preconceptions of viewer.
Bill Hsu
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