Shanghai Triad: Zhang Yimou's 1995 Literary Adaptation as Not-So-Veiled Autobiography

SHANGHAI TRIAD

(Zhang Yimou, 1995, France/China, Mandarin with English subtitles, 108 minutes)

After making six films together, Shanghai Triad famously represented the seventh and final film director Zhang Yimou would make with actress Gong Li while the two still maintained a personal relationship (years later, they would reunite, in a strictly professional sense, for two more films). 

Though novelist Bi Feiyu adapted the screenplay from Li Xiao's 1994 novel Rules of a Clan, author Grady Hendrix, in Film Movement's Blu-ray video essay, believes that it plays better as autobiography than as a gangster movie or political allegory about the corrupting nature of capitalism. 

Fourteen-year-old Shuisheng (Wang Xiaoxiao, acquitting himself nicely in his sole leading role) provides perspective on seven pivotal days in the life of a gangster's moll in 1930s China. Because Boss (Li Baotian, Zhang's Ju Dou) prefers to surround himself with members of the Tang clan, Uncle Liu (Li Xuejian, The Blue Kite) enlists his provincial nephew to join the staff. 

Shuisheng dreams of opening up a tofu shop, but in the meantime, Liu trains him to serve at the whims of showgirl Xiao Jingbao, aka Bijou (Gong Li, reuniting with Li Baotian after Ju Dou), Boss's tempestuous mistress. At first, she treats Shuisheng with contempt, making fun of his naïvete, but cataclysmic events will conspire to bring her down to his diminutive size. 

After Boss's rival eliminates his men in a scene that plays more elliptically than explicitly, he decides to hide out on a remote island to recover from his injuries and to plot his next move, bringing Bijou and Shuisheng with him. In cinematographer Lü Yue's hands, it's a misty, isolated place, characterized by soft, warm colors and tall, feathery fronds (the three-time Zhang DP would receive an Academy Award nomination for his painterly efforts). 

Though she's in the middle of nowhere, Bijou swans about in jewels, furs, and lipstick, looking bored beyond belief until she encounters basket-weaving widow Cuihua (Jiang Baoying) and her pretty daughter, Ajiao (Yang Qianquan). In the nine-year-old, Bijou sees a younger version of herself. 

She confesses to Shuisheng that she grew up in the country, too. As a character, she instantly becomes more sympathetic, though it's clear that she's doomed once Boss gets a look at the girl for himself and realizes he has met her potential replacement. 

At 30, Gong was hardly old--at the time, she was frequently cited as one of the world's most beautiful woman--but as a showgirl-turned-gangster's moll, Bijou is hurtling towards retirement age, and once Boss has groomed the unsuspecting child for the job, there will be no room for an older mistress.  

Compared to the city sequences, the film's rural remainder moves more slowly, but with a greater sense of menace, particularly when Boss's top lieutenants, including Bijou's lover Song (Sun Chun, Red Cliff), arrive to conduct some business, after which most everyone--even the island's natives--will suffer as long-held secrets come to light. The film ends as it began with Shuisheng literally in over his head, this time possibly forever. 

As Grady Hendrix notes, Boss's relationship with Bijou echoes Zhang's relationship with Gong. 

She was a 22-year-old drama student when she met the married director--and an internationally-acclaimed actress when they parted. He would soon find a subsequent muse in 18-year-old drama student Zhang Ziyi with whom he would enjoy an equally productive partnership, though he wouldn't marry or father any of his reported seven children with either actress (he would remarry another woman, a dancer with whom he had three children, in 2011).

Though autobiography may not have been Zhang Yimou's intention with Shanghai Triad, it's hard not to see the film as a form of self-critique, not least because Boss may be ruthless, but he's also clever, charismatic, and perceptive--characteristics that can be just as beneficial to a filmmaker.

Shanghai Triad is out on Blu-ray and digital through Film Movement. Images from Empire Online (Gong Li), Nicks Flick Picks (Wang Xiaoxiao), Geek Vibes Nation (Gong and friends), and Why So Blu? (Gong and Jiang).