Metrograph

Country kid Shuisheng (Wang Xiao Xiao) arrives in bustling c. 1930 Shanghai with the address of a relative, Tang (Li Baotian), provided by his uncle… but what uncle doesn’t know is that Tang is a high-ranking member of the Triad gangs, introducing 14-year-old Shuisheng to the illicit pleasures of life in the underworld as well as to capricious, jaded nightclub singer Xiao Jinbao (Gong Li), whose rocky love affair with a rising star in the organization Shuisheng bears witness to. The seventh collaboration between Zhang and Li, here exuding tawdry contamination and hidden pathos, and their last until 2006’s Curse of the Golden Flower, Shanghai Triad is a sumptuously styled tale of corruption and eventual redemption in flight from the sordid allure of a fallen city.