Wong Kar Wai is one of the rare filmmakers who can properly be termed iconic. Not only has the Hong Kong auteur made a slew of classic movies—In the Mood for Love ranked fifth in Sight and Sound’s 2022 poll of The Greatest Films of All Time—he was a leading figure in opening Asian pop culture up to the West. He has influenced an entire era with his distinctive style, characterized by leaping time frames, yearning wrapped in beauty, and poetic interweaving of music and images. His DNA can be found in everything from award-winning movies like Lost in Translation to Everything Everywhere All at Once to the acclaimed TV show Mad Men (whose opening shot of Don Draper was inspired by the first shot of Tony Leung in In the Mood for Love). A smash hit when it played in China, Blossoms Shanghai is WKW’s first television series and first major work since 2013’s The Grandmaster. The story takes place during China’s Roaring Nineties, when the Communist Party opened up the economy and the whole country dreamed of getting rich. Freely riffing on a 2013 novel by Jin Yucheng, the show is bursting with dramatic action: broken hearts, bitter rivalries, hit-and-runs, financial shenanigans, tragic misunderstandings, shattered friendships, paradises found and lost. Over thirty episodes—this is no dinky limited series—Wong serves up a cornucopia of characters, from brassy restaurateurs and womanizing fish brokers to rigid government officials and cutthroat finance guys to scheming waitresses, black-market thugs, and garrulous kiosk owners (worthy of 1930s Warner Bros.) who serve as a kind of Greek chorus. They all have their separate destinies in the new China—some sad, some funny, some triumphant. At the show’s center is an enigmatic tycoon who embodies the go-for-broke spirit of the age. [John Powers, who has cowritten with WKW]
繁花 blossoms shanghai coming to the criterion channel 11.24.2025
