Does Wong Kar-wai's series live up to expectations?

Wong Kar-wai was allowed to do a seriesWe're talking about one of the contemporary filmmakers who excels most in melodrama, and a creator who likes to expand his stories, which often expand across different spatial and temporal dimensions, as in great serials. He also does this in Blossoms Shanghai, his debut in television fiction, with a narrative around the turn towards capitalism of Chinese society, represented in the meteoric rise of Ah Bao (Hu Ge), a young man who becomes rich when the Shanghai stock exchange opens and becomes the most charismatic figure in the city. Based on the novel by Jin Yucheng, Wong follows the brutal transformations that contemporary China has undergone, in a series of 30 episodes (15 accessible to the press) that once again highlights the genius of the director of Happy together when it comes to recreating the history of an era down to the smallest detail, from objects to all kinds of dishes, from the most popular (beef chow fun) to the most extravagant (food fans will enjoy the episodes in which a culinary war breaks out between rival establishments).

In fact, Blossoms Shanghai It contains all the usual ingredients in the filmography of the person responsible for Desiring to love, from the precious staging to the magnificent work in recreating those interiors charged with infinite lives. However, the first episodes leave a taste of dissatisfaction. The series aims to convey this dizzying transformation toward a consumer economy and the competition this generates between the different characters, so Wong seems to have replaced the fluctuations of emotions usual in his films with those of the market. And his protagonists appear more energetic and competitive than melancholic and in love. The romantic conflicts that fuel the three women surrounding Bao—the sophisticated and mysterious Li Li (Xin Zhilei), the naive but determined Miss Wang (Tiffany Tang), and the mischievous and honest Ling Zi (Ma Yili)—compensate for this aspect, although it's not quite balanced. Wong also focuses on a register that in his films was in the background: that of popular secondary characters who can seem very strident or vulgar to those who identify the filmmaker with a sober sophistication. The director has embraced without prejudice many of the secrets of the success of a television series, which possibly explains why Blossoms Shanghai has worked so well in its home country, but may disappoint the director's Western fans.

The comparison with 'Succession' and Scorsese

Fiction has been compared to Succession especially for a soundtrack that unmistakably recalls that of this series. But it may have more to do with those Martin Scorsese films that portray male characters' fascination with the predatory dynamics of capitalism.The Wolf of Wall Street hides, behind the portrait of the most seductive face of capitalism, a critique of its functioning. Shanghai Blossoms, on the other hand, seems to celebrate the way China has embraced the most savage capitalism. In a fiction set in the 1990s that frequently uses archival material to contextualize events, Tiananmen Square is not mentioned and Deng Xiaoping's "inspirational speeches" are honored. It's also true that Wong rediscovers his more romantic, melancholic, even experimental side in the later episodes that return to the protagonists' past to explain the beginnings of their relationships, marked by love, naiveté, and emotional wounds. As if to make clear how capitalism has left the possibility of love behind.