Despite the best efforts, both above and below ground, of London Transport to delay me I saw Zhang Yimou's CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER (Man Cheng Jin Dai Huang Jin Jia) with Owen on Saturday night. It is really quite a bizarre film, being sensational and ridiculous - usually within the same scene.

In the 10th Century, an Emperor (Chow Yun-Fat) returns from a war to his enormous palace to celebrate the Feast of The Chrysanthemum with his Empress (Gong Li) and sons, Crown Prince Wan (Liu Ye) from his first marriage and Princes Jai (Jay Chou) and Yu (Qin Junjie). Jai has also been fighting the war for three years and soon realises all is not well at home - he don't know the half! The Empress and her step-son are having an affair and the Emperor is slowly poisoning her with a drug that turns people insane within months. What the Empress doesn't know is the Crown Prince is also having a secret liaison with Chan (Li Man) the daughter of the Emperor's physician (Ni Dahong) the very man poisoning his mother. All plans are thrown off-balance when the Empress learns of the poisoning from a shadowy informant (Chen Jin) who is revealed first as the physician's wife and then, when brought before him, as the Emperor's first wife - secretly imprisoned when he married his present wife, the daughter of a neighbouring ruler. Soon events engulf these eight people into internecine plotting which culminates on the Feast night with bloody revenge and retribution.

The story is a strange Shakespearean mixture of Hamlet and Macbeth: a King fighting to maintain his crown, a son seeking revenge, a Queen being poisoned, an old courtier whose young daughter is in love with a prince, an advancing army and a high body count. Indeed it often betrays it's theatrical source - it is based on a 1930s play. Back in the early 1990s Zhang Yimou would have made this film with the eight main characters and a few extras on a simple set - such as in RAISE THE RED LANTERN - but as his films have been getting more and more epic CURSE is played out with what looks like the population of China drafted in as extras.

The film's opening scenes involve row after row of ladies-in-waiting going through a regimented choreographed early morning dressing ritual while the denouement of the film features hundreds of soldiers fighting in the palace grounds, the mounds of dead being quickly whisked away... enter a huge choir, musicians and hundreds of courtiers! I remember thinking: where were they when the battle was raging on their doorstep? Probably listening at the door saying "Ooo it's all kicking off out there" while the choir bitched about all those rehearsals wasted for it to be cancelled at the last minute by a blood bath. The sheer lavishness of it all finally overdoses on itself leaving the distinct impression that the revenge tragedy really cannot support the bewildering operatic production afforded it.

The cinematography, art direction and costume design give you sumptuous with extra-added sumpsh using a colour palate that leaves you woozy - reds, golds, pinks, purples, fuchsias, blues, greens - and that's just the wallpaper! There are also only sporadic martial arts scenes which will probably annoy punters expecting another CROUCHING HERO, HIDDEN GREEN DAGGERS but the Emperor's black-clad assassins who fly through mountain ravenes on ropes attached to grappling hooks - like an Emperor's 1st Airborne - will keep them watching the skies.

Occasionally the actors manage to break through the film's glittering carapace. Chow Yun-Fat seems muted as the Emperor. Half the time he looks rheumatic and doddery then suddenly springs to life to start knocking people about - he put me in mind of a Tang Dynasty Andy from "Little Britain". I did enjoy the performances of Jay Chou as Jai and Qin Junjie as the watchful younger son.

The women fair better - Li Man has a bit more fire to her than Zhang Ziyi who simpered through Zhang's last two films, Chen Jin is very good as the Emperor's first wife and then there is Gong Li.

Just as 2006 saw Almodovar reunited with his muse Carmen Maura in VOLVER so in this film Zhang is reunited with his ex-partner (on and off screen) for the first time in ten years. Although in no way equaling her stunning work in JE DOU, RAISE THE RED LANTERN and TO LIVE, here Gong Li again proves that she is one of the screen's most hypnotic actresses.