Shanghai Triad

The Chinese director Yi Mou Zhang and the gifted actress Li Gong’s love story went to the peak during shooting Red Sorghum in 1987 and ended in Shanghai Triad in 1995. Many outsiders assumed that Li Gong was the reason of Director Zhang’s broken marriage. Who knows? Love for artists is miserable anyway. The only fact I care is director Zhang’s movies. My dad is a big fan of his works. Therefore I was influenced spontaneously by what I constantly hear from him.  Nearly ten years ago, when I was in middle school, my dad and mom brought me to the movie theatre and we watched The Story Of Qiu Ju. It won three of us tears. I saw Li Gong’s eyes with confusing, sense of alienation, expectations, curiosity, stubbornness and happiness. I fell in love her acting from the moment on.

Shanghai Triad, it is the story of a gang boss in 1930s Shanghai and his willful, troublesome mistress. It’s seen through the eyes of a small boy from the country who loses his innocence in eight bloody days. Li Gong acts a nightclub singer who mocks and taunts her man. More specific, she is not viewed by him as his woman but a toy. He is rich and a powerful boss of a Shanghai crime triad. Their relationship sees by a boy who comes from the countryside and becomes little servant of Xiao Jin Bao (Li Gong). His assignment is to work as a personal servant for her and he has been taught by his godfather how to serve her as the best. The godfather’s word is law in his little world and can never resist. I’m not crazy about this whole movie because the feeling pushes me to think that there’s something missing. And Li Gong’s performance seems not happy towards the plot or something. It is just one movie I won’t go back to see again.