Director Feng Xiaogang, although not as well-known as art-house darlings Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, still produces a beautiful arty-farty adaptation of Hamlet in The Banquet, an ancient Chinese melo-drama set in the tumultous period of the 5 Dynasties and 10 Kingdoms.
In case you're wondering, and contrary to the title, there's no eating and drinking of orgasmic proportions in the movie, Instead, its quite the complicated love quadrangle =P
Usual stunner Zhang Ziyi plays Empress Wan, a love-torn and ambitious babe of a monarch forced to marry the brother of her husband whom the former murders in order to usurp the throne. The evil brother is played by the brilliant Ge You who then becomes Emperor Li. Li has always had the hots for Wan and when the 2 finally get together under such treacherous circumstances, they really look like father and daughter =)) Anyway, to add to the mix, Wan's stepson from her previous marriage, Prince Wu Luan, played by solitary Hongkie actor Daniel Wu, is her former lover. You see the little Prince is atypical of Chinese royalty, preferring the Arts to the butts of the countless pretty courtesans made available to him 24/7. After his horny father steals his girlfriend Wan for himself (see it runs in the family!), Prince Wu Luan exiles himself to a nice Shakespearean theatre in the middle of a gorgeous Bamboo forest far-far-away to nurse his broken heart and to dabble in singing and drama. While he is there cavorting with a
posse of equally artistically-inclined faggots, the handsome Prince is pined for by Qing Nu, played by the delectably nubile Zhou Xun, the daughter of a Minister in his father's former court. When Prince Wu Luan discovers that his father has been murdered and that his dear uncle is now emperor, he survives a brutal assassination attempt to rush back to the Capital in an effort to exact revenge.
OK confused yet? Told you it was complicated =))
But even if you don't give a damn about the love-love thingy and all that betrayal nonsense, go see the show for its wonderful cinematography and locations. It made me want to go to China. The costumes were also marvellous with Director Feng liberally using rich Reds, Golds and Blacks to give the whole movie a wonderfully stylish modern-
Chinois feel. I especially liked the look of the Emperor's Imperial Guards, a cross between LOTR's Nazgul and Battlestar Galactica's Cylons, with their full-faced helmets and matt black/gold armor. And oh the sets and props also took on a Starck-ShanghaiTang manifestation that I would really love to see in my own apartment.
Ziyi gives a commendable performance. But for me Ge You as Emperor Li was the better actor with his lascivious glint and usual brutal Monarch demeanour. Zhou Xun was also a surprise for me though. The cutey-pie can actually pull her own weight amongst the stellar cast despite having a formidable
Da Jie in Ms Zhang. I must catch her in the screen adaptation of Dai Sijie's The Little Chinese Seamstress where I hear she stars as the main Protaganist. Daniel Wu, on the other hand, was a little difficult to put a finger on. His Prince Wu Luan is a pretty
lembek fella in the movie and one wonders why the 2 babes Wan and Qing want so desperately to bed him. Maybe it goes to show that it pays to be a SNAP (Sensitive New-Age Prince) more interested in Poetry than Policy. But yet his character brings a certain zen-like calmness to proceedings and serves as a moral guide-post in spite of the pervading immorality. Moreover Wu is Kung-Fu trained so he had no problems executing a lot of the ballet-like, slow-motion, sword-fighting replays which were quite nice to watch.
Well if you're into Eye-Candy in lush costumes with a big dash of scandalous lovin' thrown in for good measure, go catch the The Banquet. But try not to bitch about the ending though. Abit unsatisfying if you know what I mean.
And don't expect to see Anthony Bourdain, as Lord Chamberlain, whipping something up in the Palace pantry either =))
7.2/10