Goodbye South, Goodbye

An intoxicating, time-bending experience bathed in the golden glow of oil lamps and wreathed in an opium haze, this gorgeous period reverie by Hou Hsiao-hsien traces the romantic intrigue, jealousies, and tensions swirling around four late-nineteenth-century Shanghai “flower houses,” where courtesans live confined to a gilded cage, ensconced in opulent splendor but forced to work to buy back their freedom. Among the regular clients is the taciturn Master Wang (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), whose relationship with his longtime mistress (Michiko Hada) is roiled by a perceived act of betrayal. Composed in a languorous procession of entrancing long takes, Flowers of Shanghai evokes a vanished world of decadence and cruelty, an insular universe where much of the dramatic action remains tantalizingly offscreen—even as its emotional fallout registers with quiet devastation.

Kai, a brokenhearted young man from Taipei, yearns to be with his girlfriend, who's left for Paris. He spends his days working at his parents’ noodle restaurant and his nights trying to learn French at the local bookstore, where he meets Susie, a sweet but lonely girl who works there. Afraid of losing his girlfriend, and in need of money to get to Paris, he accepts a dubious offer from a local gangster - deliver a mysterious package to Paris. It’s the beginning of a wild night for Kai, at the end of which he realizes that leaving both Susie and Taipei will only take him further away from true love.

A lady fugitive on the run from corrupt government officials is joined in her endeavors by an unambitious painter and skilled Buddhist monks.

After a successful intrigue, General Yu is executed by his political opponent eunuch Zhao and his children are banished from China. But the General's children are a thorn in Zhao's side and so he does everything to kill them on their way into exile. He sets an ambush at the lonely hostel at the dragon gate. But the faithful followers of the assassinated general rush to help the children. A fight for life and death unleashes itself.